


Anatomy of a Mask

by Derin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hunt!Tim, Major Character Life, Major character death - Freeform, Web!Martin, canon-typical traumas, eye!Sasha, no beta we die like archive assistants, the magnus archives is an office comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 160
Words: 299,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24054661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: Elias hires a monster to work in the archives. One small decision that shouldn't make much of a difference.Until someone's putting googly eyes over everything in the Institute, Melanie's having pizza parties to save the almost-life of a manifestation of the Stranger, Sasha's writing off payments for illegal phone hacks as a work expense, and Tim's trying to figure out how many helium balloons one needs to fill the boss' office with in order to get fired.Oh yeah, and they still need to save the world.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Julia Montauk/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Tim Stoker & Alice "Daisy" Tonner & Basira Hussain
Comments: 3534
Kudos: 571





	1. Chapter 1

Elias rubbed at his temples, trying to ease the sudden migraine. It was his own fault – he’d known that trying to look into the mind of the nervous young woman in front of him wouldn’t tell him anything, and that it would almost certainly hurt. But he couldn’t resist finding out just what would happen. His curiosity would be the death of him someday, if he didn’t manage to pull off making it the death of everything else first.

What it had felt like was being in a pitch dark room for ten minutes and then looking directly into a strobe light. And for somebody who’s spent the past two hundred years honing the sensitivity of his sight it had, on reflection, perhaps not been the optimal course of action.

“So, Miss Sue… why do you want to work for our institute?”

“I am very interested in the research you do here,” the woman in front of him recited as if from a script. “The Magnus Institute represents the cutting edge of supernatural research and I am excited to be on that edge, helping pull back the veil of the unknown and advancing the knowledge of humankind.”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be applying for a position in our PR department? Never mind,” he added quickly at the flicker of puzzlement that crossed her bland, professional features. “Under normal circumstances, I would tell you that there are currently no archival positions open… however, this is a very impressive resume, and I’m always open to a little expansion in such an important department. Welcome aboard, Miss Sue. Let’s sign the documents and I’ll introduce you to your boss, shall I?”

“Thank you, Mr Bouchard. I look forward to getting to work.”

“Call me Elias, please.” _What you look forward to, I suspect, is tracking down whatever secret you’re here to steal from my archives. A small price to pay, I suppose, for the chance that you might try to kill my Archivist_. The Institute was well infested with worms already, but it always helped to have a backup. It wasn’t as if Jane Prentiss had ‘dibs’.

  
  


\---------

  
  


“Jon. Do you have a moment?”

“I’m in the middle of a recording.”

“This won’t take long.”

Out of respect for his boss, or at least the concept of having a boss, Jon kept most of the exasperation from his face as he switched the tape recorder off and turned to face Elias. Standing behind him was a young woman whom Jon might describe as… professionally average. She was of average height, white-skinned but not exceptionally pale, and looked about how he’d expect a professional-looking woman in a navy skirted business suit to look. He was hit with the sudden creeping dread that this woman was here to make a statement. She was within her rights to do so, but there was something draining about listening to people drone on about their vague supernatural encounters, and he was already tired from the statement he’d been trying to record. At least, he consoled himself with the thought, she seemed the type to be sensible about it, and not waste his time with mindless flights of fancy.

Although he didn’t know why he bothered making such judgements any more, even to himself. The laptop’s recording software would tell him whether the statement was genuine or not. He was a bit resentful over that; it felt like _cheating_ , to rely on a software glitch instead of proper research. 

“Jon, this is Mary,” Elias said. “She’ll be joining the Institute as your assistant next Monday.”

Jon stared. He couldn’t help it. After a few seconds he managed to choke out, “I, ah, wasn’t informed that you were hiring any more archival assistants, Elias.”

“You really do need to check your email more often.”

“Still, I would prefer to be informed in advance, outside of email – ”

“You are. That’s why I’m here now; to inform you a week in advance. Since Mary was already in the building, I felt that introductions were in order.”

“Right. Well.” Jon stood up and offered his hand to Mary. “Welcome aboard then, I suppose.”

“Thank you. Jon.” She took his hand and flashed him a smile, and Jon got the impression that she wasn’t really looking at him. Or more, that she was very much looking _at_ him, in the way one might look at a painting or a chair, or a diagram that one was trying to understand. Jon often felt like he was being watched in the archives despite the lack of security cameras, but Mary’s gaze was an alarmingly opposite sensation.

H er handshake, too, was strange. Perfectly performed, a textbook firm handshake, but she gripped his hand with spread fingers like she was trying to envelop it and shifted her grip slightly like she was trying to… what, feel as much of his hand as possible?  Jon, whose general handshake proclivities worked in the opposite direction, withdrew his own hand as soon as it was polite and managed to avoid instinctively wiping it on his trousers. He felt like it  _should_ be sweaty, but Mary’s hand had been quite dry.

“I suppose I’ll see you Monday, then. Is there anything else, Elias?”

“I don’t believe so. Good day, Jon.”

As soon as they left, Jon checked his email. Elias had indeed sent a notification about the new archival assistant… three minutes before appearing at Jon’s door. Not for the first time, Jon wondered if he did things like this on purpose.

\-----------------

  
  


“Another assistant?” Martin asked, handing Jon his morning cup of tea.

“It seems so.”

“Well, what’s she… what’s she like?”

“Professional.” Jon sipped from his mug. “Thank you for the tea, Martin.”

“No problem. Right. So when does she…?”

“Monday. Do you have work to be getting on with?”

“Yes. Right. I’ll just go and, um… right.”

There was something about Jon, Martin reflected as he left the office, that always made him feel tongue-tied and awkward. Well, if he were being perfectly honest with himself, that wasn’t completely unusual – Martin often felt tongue-tied and awkward around other people; he had ever since he was a kid, and even in school it had… well, anyway, it was worse with his boss. He suspected things would be a lot easier if he could stop stressing out about trying to get Jon to like him. Jon didn’t seem to care if people liked or were impressed by him; why couldn’t Martin be like that?

But that was something for him and his poetry notebook to figure out later. For now: work.

“Martin!” Tim dashed around a corner, nearly barrelling into him.

“Tim! You’re here early.”

“So are you.”

“I… didn’t leave.”

“Oh. Right.” Tim squished a silver worm under one shoe. “You think the new girl knows about the worms? You got the email about the new girl, right?”

“Yes,” Martin said, reminding himself to actually check his email later. “I was just talking about her with Jon actually, and she seems…”

“Like some kind of corporate spy or something? I agree. So I’m thinking – ”

“Spy? What?”

“Come on, Martin. Her name is Mary Sue. Like, they’re not even trying.”

“I’m not familiar with – ”

“MARY SUE, Martin.”

“Okay, so Sue is an unusual surname, but it’s not – ”

“It’s not a surname at all! It’s… you don’t see anything weird about that?”

Martin shook his head, puzzled. “Tim, what are you talking about?”

“Okay so, you know Star Trek, right? Well, there’s this thing where writers…” Was Tim blushing? “Look, it’s not important! Point is, that’s not her real name. She’s a spy.”

“Why would anyone want to spy on the archives of a not-very-prestigious research institute?”

This seemed to stymie Tim for a moment. After a few seconds of deep thought, he said, “Artifact storage! She’s here to steal artifacts.”

“Then why didn’t she get a job in artifact storage? And why would a spy use a name that’s obviously fake? If it’s obviously fake and immediately pegs her as a spy, it’s more likely that it’s real, right?”

“That’s what she wants us to think, I bet.” But Tim was grinning while he said it.

Martin sighed. “Tim, you’re not going to bother this poor girl about her name, are you?”

“Ha! Bother her about her name? Would I do something like that?”

Martin didn’t dignify that with a reply. “Well, maybe it’s a code name for a super secret supernatural worm exterminator,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe she’s some hypercompetent worm-killing government agent who’s going to sweep in here, solve all of our problems for us, and sort this place out.”

“I know you’re joking, but that actually does fit,” Tim said.

Martin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I was about to put the kettle on if – ”

“Martin, you’re literally holding a cup of tea right now.”

“Other people might want some! Oh, hi, Sasha. Why are you here so early?”

“I’m having a slight disagreement with my internet service provider.” Sasha flopped down into her chair. “One thing you can say about the Institute, they have fantastic internet.”

“You know,” Tim said, “there’s this fantastic new service where you can pay your phone company money and they’ll give you as much internet as you want! Right there on your phone!”

“Data plans are a scam.”

“How are you the office hacker and the office dinosaur at the same time? Wait – does this mean you haven’t checked your mail since yesterday?”

“Oh, no – did I miss something important?”

“Yeah. You’re gonna love this – ”

Martin made an escape for the break room before he had to listen to Tim talk about Mary Sue again. He was usually happy to listen to Tim’s joking ‘conspiracy theories’ while he wove some tale about how Rosie’s new shoelaces were a secret rebellion against the dress code that was the first shot in an attempted coup against Elias or something, but somehow he didn’t think “Welcome, Government Spy!” was a great attitude to greet a new coworker with. What if she didn’t get the joke?

\--------------

  
  


“It… it was just a joke, alright? Don’t…”

“A joke!” The woman’s mouth opened wide in what Derek could only think of as an imitation of a smile. She tipped her head back and started… laughing?… semi-robotically, in heaving gasps interspersed with giggles. He would have backed away, if her hand wasn’t gripped vicelike around his wrist.

She stopped laughing, very suddenly. “But I am looking for a good time,” she said earnestly. “Do you know where I can find one?”

“I um, I thought you were someone else,” Derek mumbled, pulling back, hoping she’d get the hint and let him go. But instead, the motion seemed to remind her that she had a hold of him, and she lifted his hand up into the sunlight, studying it. The hand around his wrist… changed, somehow?… like something was moving about under her skin.

“Who did you think I was?”

“My, um… my friend.”

“Who is your friend?”

“It doesn’t… look, I’m sorry, alright? Let me go!”

And she did. Without protest, and with a vaguely puzzled look, as if she’d been unaware that holding onto him had been a problem.

As he turned and bolted down the street, she shouted after him, “Thank you for the joke!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon is bad at politics and Tim is better than this at pranks

“It’s a _ghost ship_ , Elias.” Jon hadn’t even sat down after bursting into Elias’ office; he simply paced back and forth, waving the faded statement as if the paper’s existence proved his point.

“I think ‘ghost ship’ is a little fanciful, Jon. I did listen to the recording and yes, while Captain Lukas’ lack of cargo sounds a little strange, you yourself admitted that the ship very definitely exists. Besides, I don’t see how what some shipping company chooses to move around is any of our business. I’m sure that he is simply a smuggler or some such thing.”

“If we could simply clarify – ”

“Where did this sudden interest come from, anyway? Miss Sloane’s report is exactly the sort of thing I’d expect you to dismiss out of hand.”

“Well… yes… I’m sure there is a perfectly normal explanation, perhaps a delusion brought on by the stress of seeing poor Mr Kelly die at sea or some such, but it’s the principle of the thing. If this information is not properly followed up and collated – ”

“Then you will simply have to move onto the next in the enormous room full of disorganised statements that need proper follow up and collation. Such a burden, I’m sure. Preferably one that doesn’t involve Institute donors, hmm?”

“If they are donating to a paranormal research institute, then I am sure they will be more than happy to assist us in our paranormal research.”

Elias leaned his elbows on his desk and rubbed at his temples in a vain attempt to alleviate the completely non-supernatural sort of headache that tended to arise with any prolonged contact with Jonathan Sims. “Jon. Do you know how much time I had to spend in meetings apologising to various Lukases after your team’s… enthusiastic… investigation into Evan Lukas’ funeral?”

“Well, I’m sure it – ”

“Five and a half hours, Jon.”

“Ah. Five whole hours? Really?”

“Five and a half! It was exhausting!”

“Yes, I uh, I’d imagine that spending that amount of time – ”

“Do you know how hard it is to keep a Lukas in your company for more than three minutes? I had to use every trick in the book, pester so many secretaries; if I hadn’t had so much leverage over Marlena Lukas I definitely wouldn’t have been able to keep them more than an hour. So while I do thank you, Jon, for giving me a reason to beat my personal best, not to mention gain several more thousand dollars’ funding out of several Lukas donors for next year in exchange for me going away, the simple fact is that I’m a bit low on leverage and goodwill over Lukases right now, and it would be highly impolite of me to allow my employees to pester them again so soon after an incident like that. Leave this one be, Jon. Please.”

“… Fine. I won’t send anybody to talk to the captain of the Tundra.”

“Or the crew.”

“Elias – ”

“Or the crew, Jon.”

“… Fine.” The man stalked out of the room like an offended cat, while Elias did his best not to look amused until he was alone.

There was something to be said for having an Archivist who thought he was much better at hiding his thoughts and emotions than he actually was. It made him a lot easier to monitor, at least; being relatively certain of somebody’s state of mind without having to go digging into their mind saved a lot of time and energy. But then, they all started out this way, didn’t they? Even Gertrude had been fairly easy to read for the first year or so,  until she started to understand her situation better. Only time would tell if Jon was going to become that… difficult.

P robably nothing to be concerned about. If he did his job correctly, he only needed to keep this up for… a few more years, perhaps? A decade, at most. Two to be safe. He couldn’t predict exactly what the servants of other powers would do, or when, but even the least competent among them would surely be able to leave a mark on Jon during that time.  The worms and that Stranger spy, at the very least, should be done with him soon enough.

Monitoring her was going to be exhausting.  Elias always made sure to have a little extra energy coming in; the general  aura of the Institute kept everyone feeling at least a little bit watched and judged all the time, and few people fear monitoring or judgement in the workplace more than those clinging to a mediocre job in a shrinking industry. The worms helped, leaving those employees ‘in the know’ to wonder exactly where Jane was hiding and if she was watching them, ready to pounce. Still… it might be worth setting something up to give him a little boost, if only so he’d have the energy to keep up with the paperwork while  also making sure the newcomer didn’t actually kill his Archivist. 

He’d have to think of something.

\------------------

  
  


“Follow-up on that woman being haunted by the ghost of her son,” Sasha announced, barging into Jon’s office and ignoring his annoyed look. She dropped the papers in front of him. “It’s fake.”

“Well, yes; I expected as much. Eighty years old, lonely; after such a loss I can imagine – ah, I mean, thank you, Sasha,” he said when she raised an eyebrow. “Out of curiosity, how did _you_ come to the conclusion that she’s mistaken?”

“Son’s alive.” She tapped the relevant note in the file. “Changed his name and moved to America. I’ve never heard of anyone being haunted by a ghost of someone still alive, have you?” _Also_ , she added silently, _the fact that it’d record to laptop was a clue_. Why did nobody ever talk about that? Were they all just supposed to pretend they hadn’t noticed?

“Ah. Excellent work. Thank you. I will update the file and recording appropriately.”

Sasha ran into Martin in the hall.

“He’s not going to tell her, is he?” Martin asked without preamble.

“What?”

“The haunted woman. Is he going to tell her about her son?”

“I don’t know. Ask him. Were you eavesdropping?”

Martin flushed. “No! It’s just, the walls are thin, and I was walking by and I… anyway, if he changed his name and moved away and didn’t tell his mother, then he doesn’t want her to know, right?” Martin followed Sasha down the hall. “So should we tell her? I mean, if he’s hiding from her…”

“I don’t know, Martin. I don’t know whether she wanted to be updated on the situation or not.”

“But then, if she thinks he’s dead and haunting her, maybe she should know, just so she’s not scared? Or… grieving? No, I don’t… I don’t think he should tell her. How did you find him, anyway?”

“Facebook.”

“You found a missing man using a fake name on facebook?”

“Yep. Well, not _just_ facebook. I found ‘matching’ photos of our guy on seven different social media accounts and then had to play a bit of Six Degrees through a few websites to confirm if any of them were actually our guy, but he was nice enough to not put photos of himself up on his account, which gave me a massive clue.”

“But… but you just said…”

“Friends tagging him in their photos. So I had both the photos _and_ the indication that he didn’t want photos. It was easy.” It hadn’t been. It had taken the better part of a week, some less-than-legal software and two phone calls under an assumed name, which all seemed rather pointless when she already knew the statement wasn’t legitimate, but at some point it had become a matter of personal pride that she couldn’t let go.

“Why do you work here? Why not work for the FBI or something?”

“And leave you all alone with Tim? I’m not that cruel.” _Also, not American. You watch too many movies, Martin_.

“You wound me, Sasha,” Tim announced, rounding the corner. “You wound me deeply.”

“Would that I could, after your little prank this morning.”

Puzzlement flickered across Tim’s face. “What?”

“You stuck googly eyes on my laptop, Tim. I opened it up, half-asleep, and found a pair of glow-in-the-dark giant green googly eyes staring at me.”

“Um, no I didn’t.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Sure. It wasn’t the known prankster in our group, it was Martin here.”

“I would never!”

“I know, Martin. Or maybe Jon, taking a break from being Mister Professional to dabble in a bit of light pranking?”

“I’m hardly a prankster, Sasha. The occasional joke – ”

“You replaced all the sugar in the tearoom with granulated salt last week,” Martin said.

“One little prank – ”

“You switched all the ink cartridges in my pens to different colours,” Sasha added.

“Okay, two little – ”

“I know it’s you who keeps replacing Jon’s fresh permanent markers with dried-out ones.”

“All quality japes! I’d never do something like stick googly eyes to a computer. I mean, where’s the joke there? What’s the _message_?”

“I assume in some follow-up gesture, which I am dreading,” Sasha sighed, pushing her way past the boys. “Why don’t you two pull up a spare desk for our new coworker next week?”

“You’re not going to help?” Tim asked.

“And damage my delicate hands?” Sasha fluttered her recently manicured nails.

“Oooh, the woman card. The suffaregettes would be ashamed of you, Sasha James, shrinking from your right – nay, your duty – to carry a bulky desk up inconveniently steep stairs.”

“We have a service elevator. And it’s nothing to do with being a woman. I am a specialist and must protect my typing hands, whereas you are a brute fit for naught but manual labour. What else are all those fancy muscles for?”

“Martin’s not a brute.”

“I don’t mind helping,” Martin chimed in.

“Martin, hush! You’re weakening our bargaining position!”

As he glanced at Martin, Sasha took the opportunity to vanish down the hall. She really did have a lot of work to get done.

Maybe an extra bit of help around the place wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim knows Jon's dark secret, and Mary discovers a book of free faces.

The eye problem escalated through the week.  No sooner had Sasha forgiven Tim for her laptop than the eyes on the cover of Martin’s novel were covered with gaudy plastic googly ones, thankfully with a glue mild enough not to damage the book. Then, Jon walked into his office to find his own desk, office chair and bookshelf staring at him.

“Where did you even buy googly eyes that big?” Sasha asked as their boss shot Tim a long-suffering look and closed the office door in silence.

“I didn’t! I’m telling you, it’s not me! My jokes are way better than this!”

Nobody believed him at first, but even Sasha had to admit that replacing the eyes of the portrait of Jonah Magnus in the reception hall with giant glittery cartoon eyes was a bit beyond Tim’s usual caliber of prank. And when the HR email went around tersely informing staff that defacing the property of the Institute and coworkers was not acceptable, with a list of examples that made it clear that the problem was interdepartmental, she dropped the issue.

“Oh, so when it’s a few lame eyes in the archives, clearly it’s me wasting everyone’s time, but when it’s something with actually impressive breadth, a building-wide heist of epic proportions, I’m no longer a suspect? Is that it?”

“Do you know what a heist is?” Sasha asked.

“Surely you don’t want to be a suspect?” Martin asked.

“That’s not the point! I’m just saying, apparently to you guys the lameness of a joke is a point of suspicion against me, but competence means it isn’t me, and I find that personally insulting.”

Sasha backed away warily. “I know that look. You’re not going to – ?”

“I’m going to find whoever’s doing this,” Tim announced. “They think they can out-prank me? They think that the cheap trick of bringing other departments into the mix means it’s a quality prank? Ha! Artless. We’ll see about this.” He flounced off.

“Should we be worried about this?” Martin asked Sasha.

She shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll get bored soon enough.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“Then I guess we just have to hope he’s seeking this guy out as a rival, and not a partner in crime. Can you imagine two Tims joining forces?”

“A rival would be worse, I think. Can you imagine two Tims trying to outdo each other?”

She shuddered. “Good point. Well, I’m sure it won’t come to that. This will probably die down pretty quickly.”

It did not die down pretty quickly.

On Thursday, the HR emails were replaced by an email directly from Elias, simply stating that the “eyebombing” of the Institute was to cease immediately and no more would be said about it, but that any further googly eyes would result in  severe disciplinary action. “I am always one to appreciate a joke,” he wrote, to the silent disbelief of all readers, “but we must be protective of the belongings of our coworkers, and their right to work in a professional environment.”

The rate of proliferation of googly eyes decreased after that. But they were still there, showing up in odd places.

“It’s kind of a relief, to be honest,” Martin confessed, carefully picking eyes off his keyboard. “A nice change from finding worms, you know?”

“I’d agree with you if we weren’t also finding worms,” Sasha remarked wryly, squishing one underfoot.

A ll in all, Mary showing up at exactly one minute to nine on Monday morning with a placid expression and a business suit was a breath of normalcy. 

“So you’re the new girl!” Tim crowed, greeting her with a warm handshake. “I’m Tim. That’s Sasha, and Martin over there.”

“Pleased to meet you, Tim, Sasha, and Martin. My name is Mary.”

“Bossman is in the office, if you want to meet him.”

“We have already met. Is it appropriate for me to greet him?”

“I wouldn’t. He’s nice enough underneath but he gets a bit grumpy if you interrupt him while he’s working.”

“I’ll get you set up,” Martin offered. “Help you understand how to log into the computer system, all that.”

“Thank you, Martin.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Tim said, trailing after the pair as they headed for the recently installed desk, “Mary Sue. That’s your name?”

“Yes.”

“Like, your actual, given name?”

“I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you mean,” she snapped.

Tim laughed. “The new girl’s got jokes! Perfect!”

Martin pointedly ignored this and waited for Tim to drift away before helping Mary to log on. “So, are you new to London?”

She seemed puzzled by the question, but didn’t take long to answer. “I’m new everywhere.”

“I feel that way sometimes, too. Don’t worry, though, you’ll settle in here pretty quickly. The archives can be a bit… but everyone’s actually really nice, so long as you don’t get in their way.”

“Why does this computer have eyes?”

“Oh. We’ve got a bit of a prankster running about. It’s starting to get out of hand, honestly. I heard from Rosie that they found googly eyes on the Bone Chair in artefact storage yesterday! I mean, sneaking around in restricted areas like the archives without supervision is… not great… and that’s definitely worth disciplinary action alone, but at least it’s harmless. Artefact storage is dangerous! What if they had’ve sat in the chair, huh? Can you imagine?! Uh, no, I… I suppose you can’t.” Martin took in Mary’s look of polite confusion, and flushed. “The thing with artefact storage is, uh… have you worked in research before?”

“No.”

“Oh. Hmm. Fresh out of college, then?”

“Yes!” Mary smiled brightly. “I was in college very recently. It was very interesting.”

“Right, right. And now you’re here. So do you, um… believe… in the supernatural?”

“Which one?”

“Uh… I, I don’t… well. That’s how you log into the system.”

“Thank you, Martin.”

“Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Okay, Martin.”

“Right.” Martin retreated, watching Mary peel a plastic googly eye from her computer and examine it.

She seemed… friendly enough.

\--------------------

  
  


“Drinks,” Tim announced, bursting into Jon’s office and sitting on his desk. “Tonight. You’re not busy tonight, are you?” 

Jon sighed and closed the file in front of him  before Tim’s carelessness could wrinkle it . “And if I was?”

“Then I’m sure it’s nothing so important as office harmony. We want New Girl to feel included, right? So, drinks. It’s your duty as our boss.”

“She might feel more included if you actually used her name.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“How, uh… how is she? As a worker.”

Tim shrugged. “Fine, I think? She’s been typing a lot, anyway. Martin made her a cup of tea and she drank it.”

“Good?”

“No, like, as soon as he brought it to her. Piping hot, sculled the whole thing, didn’t look like it hurt her at all. Can’t wait to see what alcohol she drinks.”

“I’m afraid I really don’t think it’s appropriate for me to go – ”

“Workplace cohesion, boss. I promise she won’t even notice that you’re a total lightweight.”

Jon flushed. “How would you even know what my alcohol tolerance was like? I’ve only ever maintained a professional two beers – ”

“Because more would put you under the table, I bet. Also, not true. I was at the Christmas party of ‘13, you know.”

Jon’s cheeks reddened further. “That was a long time ago.”

“Three years ain’t that long, boss. You may not remember that night, and I’m sure nobody else does either, but I do.” He leaned close to whisper, “I know that you know all the words to Caramelldansen.”

“Tim!”

“Do you even speak Swedish?”

“No, I – ”

“Then that’s doubly impressive! Nailing lyrics in an unknown language while that drunk? I always knew I respected you for a reason, boss.”

“How would you know I nailed the lyrics if you don’t also know them, hmm?”

Tim raised his hands. “Okay, fine. You caught me. We’re both guilty. It can be our dirty little secret. Seal the pact with drinks with the others tonight?”

“If I agree, will you leave me alone to work?”

“Of course! I’m not unreasonable.”

“Then leave.”

Tim did,  grinning at the feigned venom in Jon’s voice. If it wasn’t for him, Jon would probably never leave his apartment except to go to the office. Not to mention Martin, who was happy enough making friendly small talk and keeping up with the chatter in other departments but way too shy to actually join in group activities without at least some ribbing. What a cold and awkward place the Magnus Institute would be without Tim’s good humour.

Sometimes, he felt like the only one holding this goddamned place together.

\--------------

  
  


“An entire book of faces?” Mary breathed.

“Yeah.” Sasha leaned over her shoulder to type. “I’ll help you get set up.”

“And they are free? All of them?”

“Yeah, Facebook’s completely free. It does gather and sell your data, though. And show you a lot of ads. So I guess it depends on how much you care about your privacy? But there are ways around that.”

“Privacy?”

“Yeah. If there’s stuff you don’t want everyone to know?”

Mary looked puzzled at this. She glanced at the smiling woman on the motivational poster on the wall, her clear blue eyes blessedly unmarred by plastic googly ones, and then at Sasha, cocking her head. But before she could say anything, Sasha said, “Hang on, have you seriously never heard of Facebook?  _How_ ?”

“I have been very focused on my studies,” Mary said.

“Uh… right.” That made even less sense. People in college had Facebook. It was crucial to wasting time with meaningless nonsense to avoid studying. But she didn’t want to grill her new coworker on her first day, so she let the issue drop. “So you can put your name in here, but a lot of people like to use a fake one. It has to sound real, or Facebook will pull you up on it. This information, where you went to school and live and work and stuff, is all optional. They know where you are, though, because they track where you log in. And you can put a picture of your face here.”

“This cat has a Facebook?”

“No, that’s just someone with a pet cat who used their pic instead. Grumpy looking thing, isn’t he? Interesting eyes.”

“Heterochromia.”

“Uh, right. Some people don’t use their actual face; you can put a pet or something else if you want. When you’ve got that all set up, I’ll show you how to ‘friend’ people.”

“I will have… friends?”

“Yeah. That’s the main function of Facebook.”

“I can just choose friends? From all of these faces?”

“Well, they have to accept your friend request. It’s best to only friend people you know, or are interested in for some reason.”

Mary nodded solemnly. “It’s important to know and be interested in your friends.”

“Um. Yeah. Let me know when you’re ready for the next part.”

“Thank you, Sasha.”

Sasha headed back to her own desk while Mary filled in her Facebook page with the focus and seriousness of somebody filling in a tax form. There was, she reflected, something a little off about their new colleague.

First day nerves, probably. Surely nothing important.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has a bad time. Tim has a good time. Sasha has an enlightening time. Martin ponders the consequences of purchasing ceramic lizards.

Jon was, in his opinion, being quite reasonable. He had high expectations for his team, but never asked more from them than they could give; he was always careful to spread the work out and show that it was appreciated; he’d even agreed to this little drink night. So he was blindsided by Tim’s baffling choice to utterly betray him in such a horrible manner. What had he done to deserve something like this? What had he done to offend Tim so badly?

“You knew this,” he muttered to Tim accusatorily as they approached the bar. “You _knew_ that it would be karaoke night here.”

“An honest mix-up, I swear,” Tim said in a tone that very much suggested that it wasn’t.

Jon opened his mouth to suggest going somewhere else, but the girls were already filing inside. Reluctantly, he followed with Tim and Martin. He supposed that he could listen to some amateur caterwauling while politely sitting through this engagement. It wasn’t as if anybody would expect him to _sing_.

The pub was poorly lit and more crowded than Jon would’ve expected for a Monday night, but the group were able to find a quiet corner table where a large display advertising the beer specials partly muffled the sounds of a 40-ish-year-old woman with pink hair badly singing along to Shania Twain. Jon stared into a beer and wondered why he was here, again.

“So, uh, how do you like the Institute, Mary?” Martin asked.

“She’s been here one day,” Tim pointed out. “She can’t have the full scope of how awesome we are yet.”

“Oh, one day is plenty to see everything about you, Tim,” Jon said.

“You guys hear that? He called me shallow. That’s workplace harrassment, that is. Also hurtful.” Tim put on the world’s fakest pout. “You wound me.”

“Oh, how terrible of me. I suppose the honourable thing for me to do is leave you to your fun.”

“Nice try! The honourable thing to do is have a beer with me.”

“Of course it is.”

Mary’s face, which had been screwed up in concentration, cleared. “I think that the institute contains a lot of information,” she said. “I think that it is impressive that such information can be understood when there is so much of it, in such a chaotic form.”

“Believe me, the ‘chaotic form’ is something I’d very much like to rectify,” Jon said drily. “My predecessor did _not_ know how to organise an archive. At this rate I’ll be hard pressed to have it in a decent state before I retire, and my successor will probably blame me.”

Did Sasha’s lips thin when he said that? No. Sasha had no reason to be annoyed at him. Unless she was defensive of Gertrude, for some reason?

“Your predecessor,” Mary said. “Gertrude Robinson.”

“Wait, you knew Gertrude?” Martin asked. “Somehow?”

“No.” Mary stared at his still-curious expression for a few seconds, seemed to realise that more information was required, and said, “I knew people who knew her.”

Oh, no. This girl had connections with the Insitute, and he’d offended one of them. Great; he’d had a new assistant less than a day and already alienated her. Jon cleared his throat. “What did they, uh, think of her?”

“That she was very skilled and one to watch out for, but that she was not very much of an Archivist.”

Jon relaxed a little and barked a laugh. “I’m sure she was lovely, but they’re right about that last point. Have you _seen_ our filing system?”

“Stage is free,” Tim announced, draining his beer in one gulp. “Jon – ”

“ _No_.”

"One song!"

"Over my dead body, Tim."

“You’re no fun. Sasha?”

“I’m not singing a duet with you, Tim.”

“Martin will.”

Martin flushed. “I, um, actually, with all these people around I…”

“Looks like we’re up, Mary,” he said, reaching for Mary’s hand.

Sasha butted his hand away. “Oh, no. You won’t take advantage of her naievete like that. Mary, Tim is a truly awful singer. I would not recommend it.”

“I prefer to think of myself as an _enthusiastic_ singer.”

“And parents of vandals prefer to think of their children as lovable scamps, but that doesn’t stop your voice from being a menace to society,” Jon remarked drily.

“Did you have your sense of fun, like… removed? Is there a physical operation for that?”

“There isn’t,” Mary put in helpfully, throwing back her beer just like Tim had.

“You’re all going to regret not coming up there with me,” Tim declared as he headed for the stage.

Jon sipped his beer and stared at the table. “I regret everything else about this,” he muttered. “What’s new?”

\----------------------

  
  


He regretted the next morning more.

Tim had talked him into three beers, which really shouldn’t have been the kind of problem it was presenting him with, and Jon was determined not to let on about his headache and invite further teasing about being a lightweight. Said headache wasn’t improved overmuch by the man in front of him babbling about an anatomy class full of strange, inhuman students, and the apple full of human teeth that he presented as ‘proof’ only intensified Jon’s nausea. Fortunately the assistants were all out to Lunch, so as Dr Elliott left Jon’s office he had the time to throw back some painkillers and just… be quiet… for a minute.

Group cohesion had been achieved. Mary had been properly welcomed. Now, hopefully, it would be a long time before he’d have to go out and…

And what? Spend a couple of hours drinking with friends? Oh, the horror.

When had he become like this?

Jon rested his head on his desk and tried to think. He’d never been a party animal, but he vaguely recalled a time when things weren’t this… stressful. When it didn’t seem so important to be professional and distant. It was the archive job, that’s what it was; becoming Tim’s boss, having to e on top of things, be professional, show he was competent. It had been, what, six-ish months? He’d expected to have found some sort of rhythm by now, but things… never settled down. If the others would relax, then maybe he…

But they were pretty relaxed, weren’t they? At least they appeared that way. But Jon always felt like he was being monitored, evaluated, judged. Even here, alone in his office, he felt like someone were watching his weakness – his choice to drink, his inability to tolerate any decent amount of alcohol, his indecency to come in with a mild hangover. His lack of professionalism.

He looked up at the pair of googly eyes staring at him from a box of files on the shelf.

“I really need to talk to Elias about getting better locks down here or something,” he muttered as he got up to remove them. He didn’t expect such a request to be taken seriously, of course; it was the archives, what were people going to steal in the archives? But he and his assistants left personal belongings down here, and accessed their computers and soforth down here, so if somebody was breaking in and putting googly eyes on things… well. Jon supposed he’d have to make sure he logged out of all of his accounts whenever he left the office.

And warn the assistants to do the same, when they all got back to the office.

\----------------

  
  


Tim didn’t usually eat with the other archival assistants, but he didn’t object when Mary followed him out of the office and down the street. She didn’t say anything, but maybe she was new in town and wasn’t sure where the best food was?

“I was going to grab noodles from this place around the corner. You like Thai food?”

“Okay.”

“How hot do you like it? I warn you, this place can go a bit crazy with the spices.”

Mary glanced up at the lightly drizzling sky, crossing her arms against the chill wind. “Very hot.”

“You sure? Because these people’s ‘very hot’ and your ‘very hot’ might…” eh, who was he? The Scoville police? “Right.”

\---------------

  
  


Sasha sat in the corner of the coffee shop, laptop balanced on her knees, and typed.

She never thought of this sort of thing as snooping, not really. Sure, in theory, someone bad could do what she did and use it for bad purposes, but she wasn’t going to do anything awful with the information she found. Just because her coworkers’ histories, locations and basic identity information was so easy to find didn’t mean that she, personally, was going to do anything other than look, so there was no reason for them to be worried, and it’s not like she did a thorough profile on her coworkers or anything. She only looked up stuff if she wanted to know it.

And she wanted to know about Mary Sue. Because the idea of somebody not having Facebook in this day and age? Perfectly understandable. Sasha herself wouldn’t have one, except that not having one made people think you were weird. But the idea of someone not knowing about Facebook in this day and age? That was odd. That was very, very odd.

Within thirty seconds, she saw what Tim had meant about the name being weird. There were hundreds of accounts on various social media under the name “Mary Sue” and most of them seemed to be some kind of writers’ joke. Sasha dimly recalled that Tim used to work in publishing before joining the Institute. Maybe that’s why he’d picked up on it. Finding the real Mary Sue – the specific real Mary Sue, there might be several real ones – was going to be difficult, if she was there at all. But she had to be there somewhere. _Everyone_ had an internet presence.

Unless she used a fake name online; then finding her would be harder, especially when she had such an average face. Come to think of it, Sasha couldn’t even recall her face; that’s how much it lacked unusual characteristics. What was Mary’s eye colour again? Was her nose big or small? She wore her hair in a… bun or ponytail or something, and its colour was… light brown? Dark blonde? Might have been a bit red, come to think of it. She _had_ hair, Sasha was sure.

If she was too generic for Sasha to clearly picture, the image recognition software was going to have a field day. At this rate, Sasha might be reduced to an unthinkably basic and crude move.

She might have to _ask_ Mary about her internet presence, because she couldn’t find the information herself.

Sasha hated having to stop and ask for directions.

\--------------

  
  


Martin fished his neatly wrapped sandwich out of the break room fridge, brushed the pair of googly eyes off the top, and sat down to eat. Tricia (from accounting) put a cupcake in front of him on her way to the kettle.

“Uh, what’s…?”

“It’s from Greg. He says thanks for the advice with the leg thing.”

“Oh! It’s really nothing.”

“Yeah, well, the burn’s healing great now. Also, I think Natalie worked out that you were her Secret Santa for the Christmas in July thing, so – ”

“Oh god, who told her? Those things are supposed to stay secret!”

“Nobody told her. You went three times the gift cost limit, like you do every time.”

“Yeah well, I was only going to get her one ceramic lizard, since she likes lizards so much? And it fit into the budget perfectly. But then I didn’t want it to be lonely – I mean, it’s ceramic, obviously, but I didn’t want her to look at it and think it looked lonely – and I couldn’t decide on which one she’d like the most, so – ”

“Yeah, well, expect some kind of repayment gift from her, I guess.”

“No; I think we’re fine. She won’t want me to know she figured out it was me.”

“That’s what you said about Richard last December.”

“Hey, you got a lot of free cake out of that!”

“As did the entire office. God, I think I’m still on a sugar high.”

“Well. Please thank Greg for this cake for me.”

“Will do.”

\-----------------

  
  


Tim shovelled noodles into his mouth and then stopped, suddenly self-conscious under Mary’s stare. But she didn’t look judgemental; she was staring, he noticed, at the chopsticks in his hand, carefully lining hers up in her own.

“I can grab you a fork if you want,” Tim offered, but she was already digging them into her own noodles. (She’d ordered the hottest thing on the menu, through what sounded like a bit of a misunderstanding to Tim, but he didn’t want to jump in in case he was wrong and became That Patronising Arsehole From Work.) She got the noodles halfway to her mouth when one of the sticks slid out of her hand at a strange angle, dropping them.

“I can never remember how the hands work,” she said apologetically as he helped her line them up properly between her fingers. The second time, she got them working, and Tim reached for the yoghurt he’d ordered after seeing her order, in case she needed it. But she put the noodles in her mouth and chewed with no change in facial expression, as if she was eating plain rice.

Tim remembered the previous day, when she’d drank an entire cup of boiling hot tea without seeming to notice. “Holy shit,” he whispered to himself.

This called for some experimentation.

\--------------------

  
  


Using the age and brief history details that Sasha had gleaned from Mary’s facebook account and CV didn’t really narrow down the search. They could be fake, as could her name – the Magnus Institute obviously didn’t check such things, or Martin never would’ve gotten through – but whether something was fake mattered less than whether it was consistent across accounts. Sasha narrowed the search appropriately, picked through twelve Mary Sues across multiple forums and social media accounts, looked at the list of two-hundred-odd accounts to go, and decided she didn’t care enough.

The girl hadn’t heard of Facebook; that’s why she was here. How likely was she to have an Instagram? Even if she did, what would finding it actually tell Sasha? It would be a relief to find that she had an online presence – the idea of not being able to find someone online gave Sasha the heebie-jeebies – but honestly, that would be even weirder at this point. The idea that someone who hadn’t heard of something so basic and universal as Facebook, had dropped out of nowhere like this, who couldn’t seem to give straight answers on the most basic information about themselves, and who seemed confused by even the most basic human…

Oh.

_Oh._

Sasha knew what the problem with Mary was.

And she had to warn the others, before they did something stupid.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim makes muffins. Sasha makes Decisions.

Sasha cornered Martin and Tim in back of the archives, between two ancient stacks of boxes held upright more by ancient habits than any integrity to the boxes or the way they’d been stacked. “I’ve figured out what’s up with Mary,” she whispered.

Martin swallowed. “I really don’t think we should be gossiping about – ”

“She grew up in a cult.”

The boys stared.

“Think about it. Her knowledge is so specific and weird and incomplete. She won’t give a straight answer about her past. And yesterday, she _didn’t know what facebook was_. She must have had the most sheltered childhood ever, and now she’s out here – ”

“That seems like a bit of a radical conclusion,” Martin said. “Everyone in this place is a bit, well, strange.”

“I’m normal,” Tim said.

“What’s in that box you’re holding?”

“I made muffins with different kinds of chilli peppers. Can’t get ghost peppers on short notice but I made do. You don’t want them. It’s not important. Sasha’s right; that explains why she’s using a fake name! She’s on the run or something!”

“I don’t think Elias would hire her under a fake name,” Martin said doubtfully. “Isn’t that illegal? For… for tax, or whatever?”

“She ran away from her creepy cult family,” Tim continued, “and found herself in London, put herself through college and now she’s here, relying on us to help her through this difficult world.”

“She’s doomed, then,” Martin said.

Sasha shook her head. “Don’t… I just wanted to tell you guys so you wouldn’t be all weird with her,” she said. “About her not knowing stuff, or doing stuff strangely.”

“You thought that putting this in his head would make him less weird with her?” Martin asked. 

“Hey,” Tim said, “if she’s on the run from some evil cult – ”

“I’m sure she’s not on the run,” Martin sighed.

“She might be!”

“You’re both blowing this way out of proportion.”

“I’m just saying, she’s Team Archive now, and we don’t leave anyone behind. Caring and sensible are our middle names.”

“Calm and sensible? Why did you make those muffins, Tim?”

“That’s… not important.”

\------------------

  
  


“Here are Dennis Carter’s hospital records, Jon.” Mary slid a printout across the desk. 

Jon gave them a glance. “Thank you, Mar – ” He stopped, and looked harder. “Hang on. These are… exceptionally complete.”

“They are the full records that the hospital has on him.”

“How did you get these?”

“I asked.”

“You… asked.”

“Yes. I told them I was having trouble logging in to the hospital computer and I asked for help. And they helped me.”

Jon just looked at his assistant for a long moment. He wasn’t stupid; he knew that Tim and Sasha and even, on occasion, Martin resorted to… slightly shady practices to track down information. It was necessary, with their shoestring budget and the lack of respect for what should be a highly prestigious organisation, to occasionally fudge the truth about who had sent you, or hop a fence that you perhaps didn’t have permission to cross, but he was sure that they’d never committed proper crimes, like impersonating hospital staff to hack into private hospital records as Mary seemed to be implying. 

Well… pretty sure.

Sort of.

“Mary, the… the hospital… you do understand how patient privacy works, right?” 

“No.” She cocked her head quizzically. “How does patient privacy work right?”

“Well, uh…” Jon didn’t actually know much about doctor-patient confidentiality laws. He was certain that however Mary had obtained the pages in front of him contravened them in a nontrivial way, but he didn’t know the specifics. “You can’t just go into a hospital and obtain patient records.”

“I will remember that. Jon, you asked me to determine the extent of Dennis Carter’s injuries as of October the twenty fifth two thousand and eleven. That was too long ago for physically analysing his body to give me the answers. If you ask similar things of me in the future, how should I get the information?”

“Well, you could… you could talk to the hospital, but not by just…” Jon gave up. “Did anybody recognise you there? Did you give them your name? Do you think they’d know you if they saw you again? Just in case it… comes up.”

“No.”

“Okay. Um… look, Sasha knows about this sort of thing. Next time you want hospital records, talk to her first, okay?”

“Okay.”

J on started to flip through the hospital records, but after about thirty seconds, Mary was still there, silently watching him.

“Do you need anything, Mary?”

“No.”

“Ah, okay then. Could you, uh… go and see if the others need help? And thank you for these records.”

“You are welcome. Okay.” She left.

Jon went back to looking through the records. If these injury reports were correct, Mr Carter’s story had been… exaggerated. Well, he’d already known it wasn’t a real encounter when it recorded to laptop, so he really shouldn’t be disappointed.  And flipping through the hospital records made him feel dirty, like the police were watching him and were about to burst into the office and arrest him as an accessory to whatever the hell Mary had done to get them. He read the whole thing thoroughly anyway, from the childhood stay in intensive care to the deep lacerations found on his back and arms in 2011, building a map of the man’s life, or at least the painful parts of it that required medical attention. 

He should destroy this, probably. He certainly shouldn’t put it in the file with the statement, where researchers might find it and question where he’d gotten it.

He should destroy it.

Maybe later, though. There might still be useful information in there, and since the crime was already committed… he read through it again, before locking it carefully in his desk drawer. There was no sense in hurrying to destroy perfectly good information.

\------------------------

  
  


“Hey Mary. Do you want a muffin?”

Mary considered this question carefully. “No,” she said.

“You, uh… don’t want one?”

“I wasn’t thinking about wanting or not wanting muffins.”

Tim tried again. “You can have one of these muffins.”

“Oh. Thank you, Tim.” She reached for a muffin.

Just then, Martin burst in. “Mary! Don’t – ”

It was too late. Mary was already chewing a mouthful of muffin. She smiled brightly at Martin, went to open her mouth, remembered to swallow, and tried again. “Hello Martin. Jon asked me to see if you guys need any help.”

“I’m, uh, fine, but… uh, how’s the… muffin?” Martin asked.

“It is good.”

“It _is_?”

“Yes. Thank you, Tim.” Mary walked out of the room. Martin stared after her.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Tim asked, grinning.

“When you said you put chilli peppers in them, did you mean mild ones? Just to give them a bit of a kick? Because that doesn’t sound like you.”

Tim broke a piece off a muffin and handed it to Martin, who nibbled it experimentally and immediately choked, face flushed.

“Ha, yeah, that’s about it.”

“And she just – ”

“I know!”

“Huh. Well, some people do like spicy food.”

“She should at least be surprised to be given such a hot _muffin_.”

“Well, maybe she doesn’t know what muffins are supposed to taste like? If Sasha’s right about her origins.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

\--------------

  
  


E lias didn’t have to use any special gifts to hear Sasha storming down the hall towards his office. He sighed and carefully filed away the form he’d been inspecting as she burst in and dumped a pair of googly eyes, cheap and inoffensively tiny, on his desk.

“They were in my desk drawer, Elias!”

“Is this a confession?”

“What? No! My _locked_ desk drawer, where I keep personal items, just… staring back at me when I opened it like some smug offense against privacy!”

“Ah, yes,” Elias said drily. “How terrible it must be to have a coworker who doesn’t respect privacy. I know Jon never wanted to make any official complaint over you hacking his computer, but – ”

Sasha flushed. “That’s different. Look. This prankster getting into secure areas is one thing, but going into locked drawers, going through our personal stuff? That’s going way too far. Why is this still happening?”

“If you have any idea how to catch this prankster then I would _love_ to hear it.”

“You have security cameras!”

“Not in the archives.”

“They show who goes down to the archives! And they definitely cover other areas of the building that I _know_ have been pranked.”

“Perhaps so, but our perpetrator has been very good at staying out of their way. Also, and please keep this to yourself, a lot of our security footage is… well. File corruption is extremely common in monitoring equipment here.”

“What? Why?”

“I’d like an answer as much as you. I’m given to assume it’s probably due to something in artefact storage, although who knows what. But any footage that might be useful is scrambled, so – ”

“So let me look at it. Maybe I can clean it up.”

“You’re not authorised to – ”

“Then make me authorised! This has gone too far, Elias!”

“It’s being handled, Sasha. I can promise you that when we find the culprit, the consequences will be dire. Until then, please try to be patient and carry on as normal.”

“While some creep goes through my stuff?! I don’t think so! Elias, I can’t work somewhere where I have to keep looking over my shoulder like this! Find the culprit fast, or I’ll… I’ll…”

“You’ll what, exactly?”

“I just… I can’t work like this! Fix it!” She stormed out of the office. Once she was well and truly gone, Elias picked up the two googly eyes on the desk and dropped them into his top drawer with all the others.

It helped when employees brought them back to him like this, but if he kept this little scheme up much longer, he was going to have to order more.

\--------------

  
  


Sasha had mostly calmed down by the time she reached the break room. The idea that some stranger had gone through her drawers was… well. She always felt a bit nervous, working at the Institute, like she was always being watched, like she’d look up from her computer and see someone there just staring at her.  She knew it was irrational, probably some psychological holdover from working in artefact storage – nobody left that place quite the same as they’d gone in. Too much chance of dangerous surprises, too many unknown terrors, even the psychological pressure of the testing… she’d been on shift for writing in the memory book for four days and still didn’t remember most of the month that preceded it. Anyway. She’d come to terms with the fact that she was a little bit paranoid, that the sense of irrational observation and general aura of dreaded malevolence was a figment of her mind that she simply had to live with. But sometimes, something like this happened that just… well. She’d get a hold of herself soon enough.

It wasn’t like there was anything particularly personal in that desk. It had just been a bit of a shock, to find that someone would go that far.

“Hey, Sasha!” 

Sasha looked up and smiled. “Penni! How have you been?”

“Well, artefact storage, you know. You? Archives treating you well?”

“Absolutely. Sorting boxes of old paper is fascinating.”

“Hey, you know about computers, right?”

“A bit? If you’ve got an IT problem, though – ”

“Oh, no, no; I don’t… this isn’t something that IT would want to know about.” Penni moved closer, lowered her voice. “We just need some… computer advice?”

“Oh. About what?”

“That damn google eye bandit got into artefact storage again, put eyes on the Carthage Bracers.”

“They’re supposed to be locked away!”

“They were! What if he had’ve put them on, huh?! Anyway, since security don’t seem to be doing anything, we’re… taking some initiative. Only our plan has computers involved, and…”

“Say no more. I mean, do say more, but not here. I’m in.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tales of tea and friendship.

“So would it work?” Penni asked.

“Yes. It’d be easy. I’m just… well, the privacy issue…”

“Compared to all this?! This is dangerous, Sasha! Anyway, there is no privacy issue; it’s totally voluntary. We’re not going to track anyone against their will. But people who want to clear their names… can you, like, code something to do that?”

“I’m not a programmer. But that doesn’t matter; I can think of half a dozen apps that already do exactly what you want and most of them are free. I’ll find you the best one, if you like.”

And so the Magnus Archive staff started tracking themselves. Not many; most of them thought the project was stupid, but Penni and her friends managed to convince a couple of dozen staff to download an app that would track their phones and  tell everyone that they were definitely not in certain areas that had been google-eyed, slowly wearing down the long list of potential suspects.

Sasha didn’t mention how easy the system was to dodge. The prankster could simply leave their phone at their desk for an hour, google-eye something on the opposite end of the institute, and bam! Cleared. It also didn’t account for the possibility that multiple people were working together on these pranks, which was very likely; she didn’t see how one person could sneak into so many restricted areas without getting caught. But if doing something made people feel better…

She brought her own padlock from home to put on her desk drawer.

\--------------------------

  
  


“Now, I’m a real fan of the herbals, although these ones are actually infusions, not teas. I do have some herbals with tea in them, but if you want to avoid caffeine and don’t trust the reliability of decaf, infusions are the way to go. Here, try the blackberry and mint, it’s my favourite.” Martin slid a tiny cup of boiling hot tea across the table to Mary, who drank it, showing no sign of discomfort. 

“This one is the favourite?”

“Well, it’s my favourite, yeah.”

“So blackberry and mint tastes better than lavender.”

“I think so! I also like the chamomile, but not as much.” He slid another tiny cup along the table, which she drank.

“Does chamomile taste better than lavender?”

“I like the chamomile a bit more, yes. But everything in this selection has something to offer!”

“Martin.” Tim leaned on the doorframe. “What are you doing?”

“I’m introducing Mary to the world of tea.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“The blackberry and mint tastes the best,” Mary said solemnly.

“Oh, you think so too? Great!”

\--------------

  
  


“It just gets to me, you know?” Sasha swigged back her beer and thunked the empty glass on the table. “I mean, this prank is really getting out of hand. Elias had promised immediate termination when the culprit’s caught, but that hasn’t stopped them! I just can’t figure out why they’re investing so much in something so stupid.”

She was out drinking with Mary. Sasha wasn’t one to go out drinking all that often, and certainly not in a group of less than three or four, but she was pretty sure that Mary didn’t have friends outside the office. Mary swigged back her own beer, thunked the glass down, and said, “It is strange. The eyes are watching all the time anyway, so why make them plastic? A warning, perhaps?”

“What do you mean, they’re watching all the time? What eyes?”

“Of the Ceaseless Watcher,” she said in the tone of somebody explaining the obvious. “It who sees all and comprehends none. The Watcher’s servants do not usually bother with masks, so what is the purpose here?” She looked contemplatively at her own reflection in her glass. “A peace offering or a threat? Perhaps there is no purpose.”

Sasha opened her mouth to inquire further, then reminded herself of Mary’s situation. If the girl was from some weird cult community, then she probably had a lot of weird religious beliefs. That’s how those places worked, right?

“Mary,” she said gently, “you’re safe. Nobody’s watching you here.”

“Probably not in here,” Mary agreed. “There would not be much to see.”

“Mary, are you… in trouble? Do you need help?”

Mary considered this question for several seconds. “No. Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, I am not in trouble. Yes, I need help. I need to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why are we here?”

“In… in this bar, you mean? Haven’t you ever gone drinking with a friend?” Sasha cursed herself silently as soon as she said the words – Mary probably hadn’t. But then, she’d been to college, right? She would’ve done this stuff then, wouldn’t she?

But the drinking part wasn’t what seemed to catch with Mary. She sat still for awhile, her face a picture of intense focus, before seeming to reach a decision. “A friend. Mary will have a friend.”

Sasha couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sure the rest of the archive staff want to be your friend, too. Even Jon, much of a grump as he is about showing it. Haven’t you had friends before?”

“I had friends in college. We would study together.”

“Right!”

“They were like me. Not like you.”

“… Ah. Are they, um, okay?”

“I think so. I haven’t talked to them recently. I don’t know who they are now.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Sasha tried to imagine it; leaving everything you’d ever known, leaving everyone you’d ever known behind… “Were you close?”

“Yes. We were in the same place very frequently.”

“You… grew up together?”

“We became people together,” Mary agreed. 

“You must miss them terribly.”

Mary shrugged. “I will see them again at the end of understanding. And perhaps one of them will be Mary.”

End of understanding? Perhaps best not to ask.  Whatever weird cult religion Mary had been raised in, Sasha didn’t want any part of it.

It p robably wasn’t important, anyway.

\---------------

  
  


“That particular shade of green tie is a little… much for the workplace, don’t you think, Rosie? We do have a clear policy on appropriate attire. Let’s see that it doesn’t happen again, hmm?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Ah, I see you have an updated sign-in system.”

“Security approved it yesterday, because of… recent events.”

“Our wayward prankster, yes. We really cannot have unauthorised people sneaking into such a dangerous place, can we? Well, I imagine this whole situation has security and the artefact storage teams, at least, keeping a much closer eye on the people around them. Better vigilance than disaster, hmm?” Elias finished signing in and absent-mindedly crushed a silvery worm underfoot. “And it seems that the worms are starting to show up in these halls, too. I really must try to find a better exterminator. Good day, Rosie.” 

The new table was in one of the lower security storage areas, presumably because whoever had catalogued and stored it had no idea what it contained. Elias could see the thing squirming around under there, lost in the fractal maze, waiting for a human mind to find it and drag it out so that it could consume their life. He wondered if perhaps he should warn the staff to put a sheet over it?

No. Much as he was starting to feel like he was running a halfway house for wayward Strangers, he couldn’t resist the temptation to see this through. He simply had to know what they were trying to do, and he couldn’t figure that out if he stopped them too soon. Besides, it was probably something to do with the Unknowing, and since Mary seemed to be dragging her feet on cutting up his Archivist, that was probably the best place to get Jon properly marked. 

Besides, he wasn’t in the habit of telling the artifact storage staff how to manage their inventory. If they were improperly cautious, that was their problem.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Elias is an evil bastard man.

“Ah. Martin.”

“You wanted to see me?” _At eight in the morning, for some reason? Hardly anyone is even here yet._

“Yes. Do come in.” Elias took a sip of his coffee and gestured to the seat across from his desk, which Martin nervously took. He didn’t say anything, just watched Martin in silence.

“I, um, like your tie,”Martin said awkwardly. “Very… nice shade of green.”

“It is quite striking, isn’t it? I saw Rosie on the front desk wearing this exact shade and I couldn’t help thinking, that really is a lovely green. So I purchased one for myself. Hopefully she doesn’t think I’ve, ah, ‘stolen her look’.” 

“I’m… sure she won’t,” Martin stammered. “I’ve never seen her wear that colour, so she can’t be…”

“Yes, come to think of it, I haven’t seen her wear it again since that day, either. Perhaps she decided it didn’t suit her? Probably for the best. Anyway, Martin, the reason I wanted to see you was – ” Elias was cut off by the grating sound of dial-up internet. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, irritation flashing across his features. “Sorry, Martin, I have to take this. One moment, please.” He left the office, talking into the phone. “Bouchard here. This really isn’t a good time.”

T he call wasn’t long. Martin sat awkwardly alone in Elias’ office for about ninety seconds before the man strode back in, tucking his phone inside his jacket with a scowl. “Where were we? Ah, right.” He sat down and regarded Martin with a long look. The silence stretched uncomfortably, and Martin desperately tried to think of something to say.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Elias eventually said (to Martin’s great relief), “to talk about this decorative plastic eye issue.”

“Right?”

“I’m given to understand that the problem first arose in the archives?”

“Um, maybe? I don’t really know. If seemed to spread pretty fast.”

“It did indeed, didn’t it?” Elias sipped his tea again. As he put the mug down, Martin noticed something that made his heart leap into his throat.

Two googly eyes stared back at him from Elias’ mug. 

“I’m going to cut to the chase here, Martin. I have reason to believe that somebody in the archives is responsible for this little prank.”

“That’s not possible,” Martin managed to choke out, unable to stop staring at the mug. Did Elias know they were there? No; he would’ve removed them. But it was still so early, most people weren’t in yet. Surely nobody had been in Elias’ office except Elias and… well, Martin.

Oh god. If Elias saw them, he was going to blame Martin.

“Really?” Elias replied, apparently not noticing Martin’s distress. “Tim has been known to pull these sorts of… diversions.”

“Not like this! Tim might have the occasional joke, but he wouldn’t take it nearly this far.”

“I suppose you’re right. This sort of thoroughness is more Sasha’s area, isn’t it? She can get quite single-minded.”

“You think Sasha would waste her time putting eyes on everything? Nobody in the archives would do this. Not Tim, not Sasha, it started before Mary got here, and Jon definitely doesn’t have the patience for ‘silly nonsense’ like this.”

“Very true. And despite the late hours Jon tends to keep, a lot of these pranks are taking place when they would all, presumably, be at home.” Elias raised his begoogled cup for another sip, then put it down and stared pointedly at Martin. “How are you finding staying in the archives? It can’t be comfortable long term, especially with the presence of the worms that we can’t seem to get rid of.” 

M artin flushed. “You can’t really think that I would – ”

“You’ve made some pretty compelling arguments on your coworkers’ behalf. Unless you do think it was one of them? The archive staff are my primary suspects right now, and you’re not above a little practical joke yourself, I believe. I recall hearing something about letting a dog loose in the archives?”

“I didn’t… it was raining, and the dog needed somewhere sheltered for about ten minutes! I didn’t _let it loose_ anywhere; I had it with me! And I’m definitely not putting eyes on – ”

“Alright. Alright. Just keep an eye on your coworkers for me, will you? As soon as I have enough evidence, I’ll have no choice but to fire whoever is doing this. So it would be best if the issue mysteriously stopped before anything like that has to happen, don’t you think?”

Martin nodded. There really wasn’t any other suitable answer to give.

“Excellent. Have a good day, Martin.”

That was his cue to leave, he supposed. He did so, quickly.

Maybe he should get that tracker on his phone that some of the staff were using. He didn’t like the idea of being monitor e d whe r ever he went, but if that’s what it took to clear his name… 

And he should definitely keep a closer eye on Tim and Sasha. In case he was wrong about their innocence. If he was, he had to find them out and convince them to stop before Elias got hold of them.

It’s what any good friend would do.

\--------------------

  
  


“You know what I don’t get about this place?” Sasha asked as Mary handed her another file from the box. “How much research we do.”

“It is a research institute.”

“Yeah, but this is the archive. Hold for the test.” She tapped the space bar on her computer and read aloud, “Statement of Kimberly Parker, concerning a tree that appeared in her backyard; original statement given April 4th 1999\. Statement begins:

“So the thing you have to understand is, I’ve lived in the same house when I was six. I know that backyard like the back of my hand.”

Sasha stopped the recording, played it back, and nodded. “Clear recording on the laptop. Red sticker, Mary. Anyway, this is an archive, not a research department. All the research was already done upstairs. Our job is to reference and catalogue, but we seem to spent half our time doing follow-up to replace missing data or, more bafflingly, data that wasn’t collected at all.  If only for the integrity of the archive, we really shouldn’t – oh, was that the last statement?”

“I’ll get another box,” Mary said.

“I’ll come with you. They’re heavy, and if I sit at this computer any longer without moving I’m going to turn into a statue. Figure of speech,” she added quickly at Mary’s confused expression.

A s the pair wandered between the shelves stacked high with dusty boxes, Sasha wondered, not for the first time, why Gertrude had let the place get in this state in the first place. Sasha hadn’t exactly known Gertrude, but on the couple of occasions they’d met she’d seemed shrewd, practical, and the sort of person who would be generally committed to doing a good job – the kind of person that Sasha hoped to grow into one day, although she hoped to be a bit less of a bitch. Hatever the hell had happened down here made no sense, unless Getrude had been playing some other kind of game. A corporate spy, perhaps? Or using the archives as a… a front for something? No. She’d been there far too long to be a corporate spy, and you couldn’t launder money or anything via organising old statements. 

Ah well. It was their mess to sort out, now.

“Why are we sorting the statements based on how they record?” Mary asked, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Because I’m sick of pretending that doesn’t matter. There’s something about the ones that distort digital recording; everyone _has_ to have noticed. The rest of these are probably nothing, but that handful is important, and sitting around going ‘ooh, that’s interesting, let’s ignore it and not prioritise based on these obvious and easily determined markers’ is just… messing around. At some point, Jon’s going to get his head out of his… I mean, he’s going to start prioritising the proper cases, if he’s going to treat us as a research department instead of an archival staff, so it makes sense to start sorting the wheat from the chaff while we have free time rather than wait for him to get on board.” 

“Why not suggest this to Jon?”

“I don’t…” Sasha shrugged. How was she supposed to explain the nagging, tense feeling of being watched? The creeping suspicion that everything she did was monitored, that she had to be careful of what she said or did here or… someone… might take notice? She knew it was a holdover from working in artefact storage, where some of the items could use your words and actions against you; she knew that feeling that way in a room of paper files was irrational. But she still felt it. She still didn’t want to be too… proactive. Not with Jon, anyway. She didn’t like the way he looked at her, sometimes, although she wasn’t sure why; he seemed nice enough. He probably reminded her of someone or something from working down there. 

“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m still working here, to be honest,” she confessed. “I’ve had other job offers that have a lot more room for advancement. They should be better. But I can never quite bring myself to leave this place, dumb office pranks aside.” As soon as she said it, Sasha felt terrible; Mary had left everything she’d known, and that had to be a lot harder than Sasha’s petty office complaints and career decisions. ‘I mean, uh… well.” She shrugged again. “I’m sure that Jon will either focus on being an archivist or a researcher at some point, and we’ll either start filing these things properly or prioritising our research properly. It probably doesn’t matter in the long run. A paycheck’s a paycheck, right?”

“A paycheck _is_ a paycheck,” Mary agreed. “Except that money is not real.”

Sasha laughed. “You know, sometimes I don’t think anything is.  Ugh, look at the time already… we should probably actually start our lunch before Tim finishes with his. I need to go talk to Jon real quick; we’ll finish this up later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Sasha approached Jon’s office just in time to hear a series of loud crashes and a shout of surprise. She rushed in to a pile of collapsed shelves, paper and tapes everywhere.

“Alright?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Jon glared distastefully at the mess. “A… spider.”

“A spider?”

“Yeah. I tried to kill it… the shelf collapsed.”

“I swear, these cheap shelves… did you get it?”

“I think so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing.”

Sasha chuckled. “Well, I won’t tell Martin.”

“Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.”

But Sasha was no longer listening. There was something odd about the wall that the shelf had pulled out of; the wood was soft and torn around the bolt holes. “Look.” She pointed at one of the holes.

Jon shrugged. “ It  got dented when the shelf collapsed, I guess.”

“No. It goes through.” She poked at it. “I thought this was an exterior wall?”

“It should be.”

She tore at it. Soft and damp, the wall pulled apart easily. “I think it’s just plasterboard.”

Jon joined her. He was stronger, so she stood back and let him pull. “Do you see anything?”  She could hear something behind the wall, something wriggling and squishy. Something very, very wrong.

“No, I don’t think so,” Jon said, peering closer. “It…”

And then they both saw, at once, the mass of wriggling worms that started pressing against the wall, pouring through the hole into the room.

“Sasha, run!”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WORMS.

Sasha tiptoed through artefact storage. She’d long since stopped panicking – or at least, she’d stopped the trembling, hyperventilating stage of panicking, and was now in the calm, icy fog on the other side, where the edges of everything seemed too sharp and small noises seemed too clear.

She had a mission, and that was all that mattered. Get to the fire suppression system and activate it. Don’t waste time trying to find Elias; don’t think about Tim  i n the worm-filled archivist’s office; don’t wonder if Jon and Martin were still safe in the storage room; don’t wonder if Mary had gotten away. Everything came down to the fire suppression system.

And, of course, getting safely through artefact storage.

Even after all that time working down there, she still got lost so easily in the mazes of shelves and boxes,  but as soon as she glimpsed the old wooden table networked with lines she knew exactly where she was.  She was here, at the table… in the lines… and she was good at mazes… 

With effort, she tore her eyes away from the lines. What was she…? Fire system. Fire system. Everyone needed her to find the fire suppression system.

As she turned, something moved in the corner of her eye.

“Hello?” she called.

No answer. But someone was there. Someone that wasn’t made of worms.

“Hello? I see you! Show yourself!”

It  _moved_ .

Except it… didn’t really. It was in one place, then another, closer, very close, raising something that might or might not have been an arm – 

And something barrelled into it, it was gone, a shelf a good twenty feet away collapsed – 

And someone screamed.

“Mary?! Where – ”

“Run!” The person that came charging out from under the shelf _was_ Mary, although harder to recognise under the blood, with claw marks slicing her face open to the bone. Sasha would’ve panicked anew if there’d been time, but there wasn’t; Mary grabbed her arm with a hand that felt _wrong_ (broken?) and charged forward on what seemed like too-long legs, practically dragging Sasha out of artefact storage. They slammed the door behind themselves and Sasha leaned against it, gasping.

“Did I do it correctly?” Mary asked, her voice uncertain.

“Do… do what?” Sasha braced herself for what she’d see and looked up to Mary’s face in the brighter light of the corridor, but panic must have distorted her perceptions in artefact storage because Mary didn’t look injured. Just covered in blood. Her arm clicked in a gruesome way as she rubbed at it, so maybe she had dislocated something? But she didn’t look like she was in pain. 

“Friends,” she said. “It was going to hurt you. We’re friends… I…”

“You saved me,” Sasha assured her, although she wasn’t entirely sure how, or from what. “Thanks. We need to go; we have to turn on the fire suppression system and save everyone else.”

Mary nodded and followed Sasha down the corridor. Sasha could’ve sworn she heard her mutter to herself, “We will save them, because that is what friends do.”

\--------------

  
  


Elias saved them, in the end. 

In Tim’s opinion, he could’ve been a bit quicker about it – if he had’ve figured out the fire system, say, sixty seconds earlier, Tim and Jon would have had a lot less pain and injury to deal with – but somehow, everyone had scraped through the experience alive. Except Prentiss, of course. And Martin had even found an old corpse, so that was… exciting, in its own way.

Hopefully, the police would be finished with all that by the time Tim’s medical leave was up.

“‘Oh, hey Tim, why don’t you move down to the archives with me, it’ll be a nice relaxing job,’” Tim muttered mockingly under his breath as he surfed Netflix. “‘Far less stressful than research.’ Well that worked out great, didn’t it.” Nobody had said anything about flesh-eating fucking worms. He should quit. Go back to publishing.

He wasn’t going to.

Maybe Elias would let him transfer back into research, out of that worm-infested basement, but… he couldn’t leave the institute. If he had any chance of avenging Danny, he needed to know where that circus was, where that fucking clown was. He needed to know how to kill it.

And for that, he needed the Magnus Institute’s library. For all the junk in there, they did have some good texts on circuses, and even better ones on Smirke’s architecture. He needed more time to keep digging. And without any other credentials relevant enough to get him in the door, that meant he needed to keep working there. Worms and all.

In fact, this was even better, in some ways. Because now they knew about the tunnels. The tunnels that had to be from the old prison, somehow, even though the prison had been destroyed and the plans had certainly shown no tunnels, but Smirke architecture was Smirke architecture. Yeah.

He’d heal up and go back to work. He’d learn everything he could about what happened to his brother. And then he could quit, go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and… back to publishing, probably?

Man, he was going to be so out of touch in the industry. He hoped he could catch up.

\----------------------------

  
  


“Tim and Jon aren’t answering my texts,” Martin fretted, unwrapping his sandwich. “Do you think they’re okay?”

“They’re probably grumpy because they got eaten by worms,” Sasha pointed out. “I’d give them space, if I were you.”

“But what if they need something?”

“Then I’m sure they’ll call us.”

“But are we sure they know they can call us? Like, they know we’re here to help, right?”

“Of course they know,” Mary said firmly. “They know that we’re friends.”

“Do you think they’ll be alright, though? I mean, is it rude for me to suggest therapy, or…?”

“I think we all probably need therapy at this point,” Sasha said.

“Are you going to get some?”

“Ha! No.” Where would she even begin explaining anything to a professional? Even if she could find one that would believe her?

“I mean, I don’t…” Martin swallowed. “Being in my flat, with the worms outside, was terrifying enough. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. But they actually had them, like, inside them, eating them… and I know you had one too, with that Michael thing, but they had to think they were going to die right then. Die or be living hives for Jane’s – ”

“Stop!” Sasha snapped. Then she forced herself to calm down. “Yeah. They’re probably not in a good place right now. But neither are we, really, are we?”

“Nothing like that happened to us.”

“You got lost in a series of secret worm-infested tunnels and found a corpse. And we were in artefact storage when…” Sasha shrugged and picked at her salad.

“What… what actually happened to you two, in there?”

“I’m not sure,” Sasha admitted. “What did happen, Mary?”

“Hard to say. It was very confusing.”

“You were hurt pretty bad.”

“No, just a bit of a cut on the head. The doctors said I was fine.”

“There was blood everywhere.”

“Head wounds often bleed a lot due to the high capillary density over the skull!”

“And your arm…?”

Mary looked at her arms, frowning. “Is there something wrong with it? Which one?”

“No, I just… I’m a bit muddled over the whole thing, I think.”

“Well, at least… at least Prentiss is gone,” Martin said. “Now, maybe things can get back to normal? After Jon and Tim get back, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Sasha shot a glare at the googly eyes stuck to the door that she hadn’t summoned the energy to get up and remove. “Normal.”

“How long have those eyes been up there?” Martin asked.

“I don’t know. At least since yesterday?”

“But were they there before that?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters! If they only went up yesterday, Tim couldn’t have put them there. Which is good news.”

“Didn’t we agree Tim didn’t do this ages ago?”

“Yeah, but… well, Elias thinks it’s definitely someone working in the archives, so – ”

Sasha barked a laugh. “Is that what he told you? Because yesterday Penni came to me asking about ways to make sure people didn’t just leave their phones at their desks to go prank people. She said that Elias told her it was someone in artefact storage.”

“Oh. You think he’s doing this to all the departments?”

“Makes sense, if he wants us to find the prankster for him.”

“Only if he wants to make the working environment even more tense!”

“They were put there on Thursday,” Mary said.

“And you didn’t take them down?”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t interfere with the Watcher’s eyes in this place. It would be rude.”

Sasha and Martin exchanged a glance. _Cult_ , Sasha mouthed.

“What are the Watcher’s eyes?”

“Most of them here, I think.”

“Most of the… eyes here? Like, the googly ones?”

“And the others.”

Sasha raised a brow at Martin. Like she had, he seemed to decide not to pursue the issue. Instead, he said, “So uh, how are you holding up with all this, Mary? I mean, you’ve been here what, a month or so, and we’ve already found mysterious tunnels and been attacked by worms. It’s probably… not what you were expecting, right?”

“No. I wasn’t expecting anything.”

“And… now?”

“Now I know to expect mysterious tunnels and worms.”

“Oh. Hopefully not. I uh, I don’t think we’ll see the worms again.” He shuddered. “I hope we don’t.”

“Me too,” Mary said. “We’re friends, so I don’t want the worms to eat you when you sleep.”

“Oh, he doesn’t live in the archives,” Sasha jumped in. “He was just staying here because the worms were stalking him at his flat. Now he’s… Martin, are you still sleeping here?”

“I just don’t want to go home yet, okay?” he snapped. “It’s been… it’s only been a couple of days, and every time I go back to my apartment I don’t want to close the door because I just feel like she’s going to _trap_ me in there.”

“Okay, okay.” Sasha raised her hands. “So you could… move?”

“I am. But my lease has another two months on it and I can’t afford to rent two places at once. So I’m just going to have to… spend a few more days getting myself together, and then… deal with it, I suppose.”

“You can’t go to your house?” Mary asked.

“It’s complicated.”

“Then you can come to my house. There are no worms there.”

Martin looked surprised. “Oh, no; I don’t want to impose on – ”

“My friends and I lived together before. There was no imposing.” She frowned. “Is that wrong?”

“No! No, I… okay. Thank you, Mary. I’ll… I promise to be out of your hair as soon as possible.”

Her frown deepened, and she reached up to touch her hair.

Sasha rolled her eyes. At least the archives were never boring.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mary lives in a normal human house and does normal human things.

Martin hadn’t entirely believed Sasha’s cult theory, but as soon as Mary waved him into her house, he was certain that she was correct.

He house was too large for one person, with an overgrown garden and dusty halls. Everything about it screamed ‘abandoned’, which Martin politely ignored; she’d probably rented the cheapest home of its size she could find and hadn’t gotten round to cleaning up, yet.

She had remarkably few possessions. He stepped into a lounge room with no furniture except for a single unplugged television, large rug (the kind that look like a bearskin with the head still attached), and several photos staring down at him from the walls, mostly artfully overexposed close-ups of people smiling down at him with bland eyes, all as unremarkably stock-photo-esque as Mary’s own face but none, he noticed, depicting Mary.

“Are these your friends?” he asked.

“Martin and Sasha and Jon and Tim are my friends,” she replied.

Ah. Of course; she’d probably been… excommunicated, or whatever cults did, and had cut off connection with these people. But she still cared enough to keep the photos up. Probably a sore spot.

The kitchen and dining room were equally sparse. Mary had, for some reason, invested in a bowl of fruit, kettle, toaster, and a bunch of spatulas and wooden spoons and things in a decorative holder on the counter, but the actual drawers and cupboards were empty – no cutlery, crockery, or anything that wasn’t in plain sight. The only exception was a large collection of teas and herbal infusions in one corner cupboard, and a single white mug. So far as he could tell, the only tea towel she owned was the one hanging artfully on the oven door, next to a pair of oven mitts with the price tag still attached.

The spare room she showed him to was similarly… aesthetic, but at least that was expected in a spare room. A perfectly made bed, single lamp on an otherwise empty bedtable, and empty chest of drawers beneath a window covered in lacy curtains was what he expected from such a room, but the other rooms of the house painted a disquieting picture.

This woman definitely had no experience living in a modern home.

“I’m going to have to go pick up some of my stuff from my apartment,” he said. “Thanks again for letting me stay.”

“Do you want help when you pick some of your stuff up from your apartment?”

“Uh… sure. If you don’t mind.” Another pair of hands would help him carry more, and Martin wasn’t thrilled with the idea of entering his apartment alone any more than he had to.

In the end, Martin grabbed the two biggest bags he owned and just filled them with everything essential that Mary didn’t seem to have. Cutlery, crockery, some very basic cookware. A good chunk of his linen closet, since she didn’t seem to have spare sheets or anything. It occurred to him that she was probably pretty strapped for cash, if she’d been cut off from her family suddenly. He also, on a whim, found space for his VCR and a handful of his favourite movies, since her TV wasn’t hooked up to anything; he didn’t think she even had internet, so Netflix was out of the question.

“Don’t tell the others I own a VCR,” he said sheepishly as he tried to make room for it among his spare clothes. “I don’t need Tim to have more ammo for his ‘retro aesthetic’ jibes.”

“I won’t,” Mary said, inspecting a snow globe she’d taken from his windowsill. “Martin, what is this for?”

“That? Oh, it just looks pretty. If you shake it, it makes it snow.”

Mary shook it excitedly, glanced out the window, and looked confused for a moment before her eyes fell back on the globe, and widened.

“It’s not important,” Martin felt the need to clarify. “It’s just pretty.”

“Everything is pretty,” Mary replied. “Nothing is important.”

“Some cheerful nihilism. Great. Well, you can have that snowglobe, if you want. God knows I’ve got enough trinkets.”

“Thank you, Martin.” Mary flashed him a smile and stuffed the globe into a pocked that Martin was sure looked too small to hold it.

“We should probably buy some food after we drop this stuff off, too. I couldn’t help but notice that you don’t have any?”

“I have a bowl of fruit.”

“So you won’t get scurvy, great. But we’re going to need more than fruit.”

They did lasagne in the end, the kind that comes pre-made from the supermarket. Martin had never been a great cook, and from the looks of the kitchen he doubted that Mary had ever cooked anything in her life, but she watched with fascination as he preheated the oven and set the foil dish in, like it was some amazing feat of gastronomical engineering.

Then, after dinner, he showed her how to wash and dry dishes. Just how sheltered had her life been?

“What was your life actually like?” he couldn’t help but ask. “Before all this?”

“Do you mean, before I was Mary?”

So Mary Sue _was_ a fake name. “Yeah.”

Mary considered this for a long time, slowly drying a plate, and Martin started to think she wasn’t going to answer. But eventually, she said, “Jan was interesting, and being her was… safer. Things are very complicated now.”

“Do you miss your old life?”

She shrugged. “I knew I wasn’t going to be Jan forever. And Mary is very interesting, too. Mary knows how to cook lasagne, now.”

“An important life skill, I’m sure,” Martin laughed.

Martin was putting his stuff away in his room when Mary appeared in the doorway, holding one of his video tapes. “What’s this?” she asked, and lifted it like she was going to shake it vigorously like the snowglobe; he snatched it out of her hand before she could do so.

“It’s Alien,” he explained, then remembered who he was talking to. “I mean, it’s a videotape; a movie in a little box. The movie is called Alien. It’s a scifi horror; do you like those? Oh, wait, you might not know what – ”

“I like horror,” Mary said, smiling in a way that seemed to reveal far too many teeth.

“Great! Then let me show you how a VCR works.”

One thing better than watching Alien alone, Martin quickly learned, was watching Alien with somebody who clearly had no idea what to expect from the movie. He quickly found himself with a newfound admiration for her bravery; Mary didn’t jump, flinch or wince at a single scare in the movie. The whole thing just seemed to delight her. Had she been this composed during the Prentiss attack? No wonder she’d survived. No wonder she hadn’t quit immediately after. He was somewhat reassured to know that the person he was staying with would be so cool in the face of a crisis; if something like Jane followed him here…

But Jane was dead. It was over.

He told himself that, over and over, as he thoroughly checked his bed for worms before climbing into it.

Martin didn’t remember having any nightmares that night, but he must have, because at one point he sat bolt upright, certain that a woman was standing in the doorway watching him sleep. _Jane!_ But by the time he gathered his thoughts enough to look again, the doorway was empty.

He got up to close the door, trying not to remember that he had very definitely closed it before going to bed.

\---------------------

  
  


“Jon, you’re supposed to be resting.”

Jon rubbed his temples and tried to ignore the sharp aches in his… everything. The painkillers only did so much, and the worm wounds were taking their sweet time healing. He told himself that that was normal, injuries didn’t heal overnight, it didn’t mean there was something about the worms that would leave him a mass of bleeding holes forever… after all, Sasha’s shoulder had healed just fine.

“I _am_ resting, Martin. Archival work is not physically taxing.”

“Not until a bunch of worms pour into your office and you end up running through a bunch of secret tunnels.”

“Yes, well, hopefully we can avoid a repeat of that little incident.” Jon tried to sound dismissive, but Martin had made a good point, sort of. Something very dangerous was still here. Gertrude had died in this room, and Jon very nearly had, too, and every instinct he had screamed at him that he was still being watched, and that someone here was hiding from him, wasn’t what they seemed. Those facts all taken together lead to one obvious conclusion – Gertrude’s killer was close. And until he knew why she’d been killed, he had no idea how much danger he, or anyone else in the archives, was in.

He glanced up at Martin, who looked concerned as he handed him a cup of tea. Martin, who he’d always taken to be incompetent, always dismissed and overlooked, but whom had shown remarkable preparation and resourcefulness in the tunnels – did that mean he’d been playing the fool until now? Martin had brought the worms here; what if he’d done it on purpose? He’d been living in the archives until the attack; had he been using the night hours to… help them, somehow? Prepare the worm invasion? Then he’d lost Jon and Tim in the tunnels, being conveniently absent when they’d run into Prentiss…

But if Martin had killed Gertrude, he wouldn’t have told them about the body and the tapes, right? Unless there was some larger game here.

“Thank you for the tea, Martin. I’m fine. I just… I have a statement to record, if you don’t mind.”

Martin hesitated. “You would… tell me if you weren’t fine, right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Jon lied emphatically. “I just want to get back to a normal routine as quickly as possible.”

“Yeah. Okay, that… that makes sense.” Reluctantly, Martin left.

The statement was, as always, exhausting to record, but he always felt a bit sharper after doing them. A bit more able to focus on the sense that some one was monitoring him, that something wasn’t right.  And that was exactly what he needed to be able to pin down.

At least people had stopped sticking googly eyes to his possessions. That had been getting irritating.

He’d just filed the new tape away when a knock came at the door.

“Come in.”

Mary strode in and carefully placed a file on his desk. “Here is the location and employment history of Stan Hellensfield,” she said. “And I didn’t use any government or hospital computers.”

“Right. Yes. Thank you, Mary.” Jon glanced up at her open, friendly face. Somebody around here was hiding from him… could it be her? No; she didn’t come to the Institute until more than six months after Gertrude’s death. Out of everyone, she was the one person he could be sure was on the level. “Mary. Martin’s staying with you, right?”

“Yes. For one more month, until his new lease starts.”

“Good. Are you two good friends? Close?”

“We are friends. We are often close to each other. The archives and my house are both small spaces.”

Jon considered clarifying the question, but it probably wasn’t worth it. “Would you say Martin behaves… suspiciously?”

She shook her head. “Martin’s rarely suspicious of anyone over anything. He did think that Tim might be responsible for putting the eyes on – ”

“No, I mean… do you think he’s hiding anything dangerous? Any dark secrets?”

“I don’t know. I will ask him.”

“No! No, don’t ask him. Just… what’s he like? I know he writes poetry, but any other unusual hobbies? Likes? Dislikes? Anything odd he does? What does… does he talk about me?” Jon rubbed his temples. This wasn’t going to be helpful. But something else might be. Jon glanced at the bottom drawer of his desk, where he’d stashed the very-much-illegal hospital record that Mary had picked up with apparently no trouble.

“Never mind all that. I… I need your help. I want you to do something secret for me. You can’t tell any of the others. It might be a little dangerous.”

“Okay.”

Jon blinked. “You agree just like that? I haven’t told you what it is yet.”

“We’re friends, so I will help you.”

“Right. Good. I need… when they found Gertrude, she was in a room surrounded by tapes. The police took those tapes as evidence; I really need them back. Can you get them from the police for me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. But you have to be careful. The police can’t know you brought them back here, okay? They can’t recognise you, or trace anything back here. If you can’t do it secretly, don’t do it; we’ll find another way.”

“I can get you the tapes secretly.” There was no doubt in her tone.

“Oh. Uh. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Do you want anything else?”

“No. Just, uh, take your time, and when you do manage to get them…”

“I can get them now.”

And she left.

Jon stared after her. Had… had that been a bad idea? It was already striking him as an exceptionally bad idea.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is fighting and no one is happy.

“So Tim’s coming back next week,” Martin explained as he trailed after Sasha and Mary towards the break room, “samd I’m thinking we could have a little… archive celebration, you know? At having the whole crew back together again? Nothing big, just maybe some cake, spend a bit of time together…”

“Have you cleared this with Jon?” Sasha asked.

“Well, no, not yet. He’s been a bit… weird, since the Prentiss thing, have you noticed?”

“Weirder than normal?” Sasha asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah. I keep seeing him like, looking at me. Watching me, when he thinks I don’t notice, you know?”

“You watch him when you think he doesn’t notice,” Mary pointed out. “You do it often.”

Martin flushed. “That’s not… oh, god,  _has_ he noticed? Has he said anything?”

“He asked me if we were close, and then he asked me about what sorts of things you did and did not like, and whether you ever talked about him. Then he told me a secret.”

“A secret? Oh god, was it about me? What secret?”

“I can’t tell you. _It’s a secret_.”

“Oh, god.” Martin pressed his face into his hands, which was why he didn’t see the tall man approach. He looked up just in time to see him level a glare at Mary, then punch her full in the stomach, slamming her into the wall. Before anyone could react, he’d stalked off.

“Mary! Are you alright?!” Martin cried, just as Sasha shouted, “Hey, what the hell! Security! Can someone get security?” and charged off down the hall.

“I’m okay,” Mary said, climbing to her feet. “Don’t call security. I deserved that.”

Martin  scowled. “Like hell you – ”

“I hit him first.”

“When? Why? What did he try to do to you?”

“Nothing. He was looking for a face and I got in the way.”

“A face? What? Are you concussed? Did you hit your head?”

“I’m _fine_.”

“You sound concussed.”

“We should stop Sasha from whatever she’s doing. Come on.”

\--------------------

Angela looked at the four people assembled in front of her and, not for the first time, regretted getting a job in Human Resources.

She’d dealt with weird complaints before. Academics were high strung, especially the kind of academics who chose to go into paranormal research. But this? This was something else. The man and woman sitting on the seats in front of her couldn’t be more opposite; the man tall and muscular with scruffy hair, the woman the very definition of average, and the pair of them hunched over and avoided each others’ gazes like a pair of toddlers caught fighting. The other woman paced the room furiously behind them, still ranting, while the other man hovered by the door, clearly wanting to leave. Angela wished his opinion was a little more widespread among the group.

She held up a hand to put a stop to the ranting. “I’m having some difficulty following this,” she said. “What happened here?”

“Nothing,” the seated man and woman said in unison.

“Oh, it wasn’t nothing,” the pacing woman said. “This neanderthal came out of nowhere and assaulted Mary here.”

“On that note, Sasha, I think Mary might actually be concussed,” the man by the door said, “so – ”

“We don’t need to be here,” Mary said.

The man beside her stood up. “Great. Then I can get on with work.”

“Like hell. Mary, I know you’ve come from a… difficult environment, but you don’t need to put up with that kind of thing here, okay? People can’t just hit you whenever they feel like it. Anyway, this has to be against some kind of code of conduct, against the law, no matter how Mary feels. This fucking ogre – ”

“My name’s Clark,” the man said sharply.

“ – can’t just walk around hitting people. That’s a hostile work environment.”

The woman, Sasha, paused for breath, and Angela cut in. “If Mary doesn’t want to make a complaint, there’s not much I can do.”

“Well what if I want to make a complaint?” Sasha asked. “He’s creating a, a dangerous work environment.”

“Okay, you know what? Fine. I’ll email all four of you the relevant forms and you can fill them out or not. It’s up to you. I’ll need your email addresses.” She pushed a blank sheet of paper across the table.

The four of them wrote down their emails, some more reluctantly than others, and filed out. The man, Clark, gave her a smile on the way out and said pointedly, “Do let me know if you have any more problems with opening pdfs, won’t you?”, then closed the door before she could ask what the hell he meant. But glancing at the email list gave her her answer, as well as freezing her heart for several seconds.

The email he’d written down was for Clark Simpson, her IT guy.

And the man who had just smiled at her was definitely not Clark Simpson.

What the hell was going on?

\---------------------

  
  


Spying on the Stranger’s tools was not difficult for Elias, exactly. It was just slightly harder than spying on normal humans. He couldn’t simply find Mary’s mind and latch on; he had to search for her manually, through other eyes.

Fortunately, he had a lot of eyes.

Mary stood in artefact storage with the life thief, arms crossed, inspecting the fractal table. She bit her lip.

“Well?” the thief – Clark now, Elias supposed – asked. “Can you break it?”

She shook her head.

“Damn.”

“If you can’t do it and the circus can’t do it, I don’t know why you thought I could,” she shrugged. “Maybe get one of the humans to help you?”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do? Besides, you could be lying to me. You did attack me.”

“You went for the wrong face. I’m using that one.”

“You don’t need anyone else’s face!”

“Turns out I do. Sasha is Mary’s friend.”

“I could’ve had her life and been your friend.”

“Yes, you could have. But you aren’t. And you weren’t then, and she was, and you had an entire institute to pick from, so stop whining. What are you here for, anyway?”

“What are _you_ here for?”

Mary shrugged.

“Fine. You have your secrets, I’ll have mine.” Clark rubbed the back of his neck. “Not that it’s easy to keep any in this place.”

Mary regarded the table thoughtfully. “I’ll try to get you some help with the table. But I don’t think there’s much I can do. It won’t matter soon, anyway. The spider’s power won’t matter after – ”

Clark snorted. “Yeah, sure, if everything works. If the whole Unknowing isn’t delayed  _again_ .”

“Then we will wait longer,” Mary shrugged. “I have a lot of movies to watch, anyway.”

“Yeah, _you’re_ not chained to a _table_.”

“Then keep that life in one piece until we can find someone to break it, and it won’t matter. I have to get back to work.”

“Yeah, so do I. This idiot in the marketing department always locks himself out of his email at this time of day and he’s going to call for my help at any moment.”

“What is an idiot?”

“You are.”

E lias opened his eyes, having learned absolutely nothing. Well, what had he expected? That they’d just hash out their Evil Plan right there in the middle of a giant temple to the concept of being monitored, which was also their enemy? They were probably looking to steal some artefact or some important information for the Unknowing, which Elias wasn’t particularly worried about, but it would be nice to have a timeline. If neither of them was going to do him the favour of attacking his Archivist, then the Unknowing would be the best place to get Jon marked, and he needed to know if he had enough time to get him powerful enough.  Because Jon right now…

\---------------

Jon reached the end of another of Gertrude’s tapes, rubbed at his eyes in the hopes it might clear his vision (it didn’t), and looked blearily down at his notes. So far they read:

\- Circus (Gregor Orsinov, “Unknowing”, “The Stranger”)

\-  Mary Keay had a Leitner that could talk to the dead (didn’t get on with Gertrude – possible suspect?)

\- Changeling monster – same as the one that took Graham Folger? (“The Stranger” mentioned again)

T he notes were sparse because, over the past week, Jon had managed to bring himself to listen to only three tapes.

It shouldn’t be hard to pay attention to a willy ghost story, but somehow it was intellectually exhausting. Come to think of it, when he was doing the tapes himself, it had been the same – he’d managed to do, what, one per week? The nonsense statements, the ones that recorded to his laptop, he could breeze through those one after the other, but the real ones were wearying somehow.

Why would merely hearing about the supernatural be so tiring? Was that something to do with how the audio wouldn’t record electronically? Did it… do something to the mind, too, not just computers? That was an unpleasant thought.

But if he wanted to find out why Gertrude had been killed, he needed to push on. The answers had to be here somewhere; they _had_ to be. Why else would these tapes have been with her?

Wait. Wrong question. No – right question, wrong conclusion. Why  _had_ these tapes been with her? She’d been shot in her office – his office – and moved down there, so why would the killer pile a bunch of incriminating evidence around her? But if the answer wasn’t on these tapes, that made less sense, because why would they pile a bunch of random tapes around her?

Ugh, the further he dug, the less sense anything made. Although that might just be because he was so tired.

All he knew for certain was that his predecessor had been murdered, and somebody close wasn’t what they seemed.  So. Put the statement aside for a moment, focus on the colleagues.  He’d dug up the backgrounds and work histories of Martin, Sasha, Tim and Elias, but hadn’t been able to find anything on Mary, which put her back on his suspect list because who doesn’t have any kind of history? He’d have to look harder later, but for, now, the most suspicious was – 

Martin burst into the office. “Sorry to interrupt, Jon, but there’s a – ”

A policewoman slipped into the room behind him. “Me,” she said. “There’s me.”

Jon stared blearily at her for a moment before remembering who she was. Constable Basira Hussain. She’d questioned him about Gertrude’s murder.

“Are you here to make a statement, constable?” he asked.

“What do you think?” She glared at Martin. “You. Out.”

Martin glanced apologetically at Jon and backed out of the room. The constable kicked the door closed behind him. “Some evidence relating to the Gertrude Robinson case has gone missing.”

“That’s very unfortunate,” Jon said, ankle pressed to the box of incriminating tapes under his desk. “But I’m not sure how I can help.”

“You can tell me where they are.”

“Me? You think I broke into a police station to take evidence relating to a crime I very much want solved?”

“I think you’re the only person who wouldn’t shut up about those tapes while we were carting them out. And that makes you our number one suspect.”

“Well, as you can see,” Jon said, waving the tape recorder that very much still had one of Gertrude’s tapes inside, “I already have plenty of tapes of my own. Do I really look like the sort of person who could break into a police station unnoticed?”

The policewoman looked him up and down, eyes lingering on his raw worm scars and uncombed hair. “No, you don’t. But I’m sure you won’t mind if I take a look around?”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“No,” she said immediately, then looked slightly surprised at herself.

“Then I do mind. Anything else I can help you with, constable?”

“Unlikely. Although you don’t seem too upset by this news.”

“Upset that my predecessor was murdered and the police have apparently lost important evidence? Of course I’m upset. But I’m sure you’ll have another chance to solve this when I show up with three bullet wounds in my chest, too, so don’t feel too bad. Now if you don’t mind, I am very busy.”

“Have a good day, Mr Sims,” the constable said in that customer service tone that means ‘eat an enormous bag of dicks, you shitstain on the universe’s sweatiest jockstrap’, and left.

Jon lowered his head to his desk, and closed his eyes.

He shouldn’t have been that rude to the police. He knew he shouldn’t have been that rude. He knew it was a mistake while he was doing it.

But he was far too tired to care.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Martin tells a bedtime story

About a week after Martin had started staying with Mary, he woke up certain that he was once again being watched while he slept. And he was definitely right this time, because as he flicked the lamp on, he could clearly make out Mary standing in the doorway, clad in pale pink pyjamas and clutching a yellow teddy bear, for some reason.

“Mary, what the hell?! Are you _watching_ me _sleep_?!”

“Yes.”

Martin wasn’t sure how to respond to that. After a few seconds, he choked out, “Why?”

“I can’t sleep.”

Martin closed his eyes and forced himself to take several deep, calming breaths. He reminded himself that his housemate, who had been so kind to give him somewhere to stay rent-free, wasn’t necessarily raised with the same social norms as decent people in civilised society.

“Mary,” he said in what he hoped was a patient tone, “people don’t like it when you watch them sleep. It’s creepy.” When her expression showed no comprehension of this, or perhaps no comprehension of why it was important, he tried again. “Please don’t watch me while I sleep.”

“Okay, Martin.” She turned away, and he felt a sudden stab of pity.

“Look, I know you didn’t mean… it’s just… after Jane Prentiss I… why are you having trouble sleeping?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look hard.”

“Are you hurt? Frightened? Did you drink too much caffeine?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been drinking the blackberry and mint herbal infusion. It’s the best one. There’s no caffeine in it.”

“Right.” Martin got up, racking his brain for sleep tips. “Uh, I hear warm milk helps. My mum used to give me warm milk back before my dad… back when I was little. And tell me a bedtime story, of course.”

“What is a bedtime story?”

“It’s a story you tell someone when they go to bed, to calm them down and help them sleep.”

“Can you tell it to me?”

“Well, it’s… it’s really more a children’s…” Martin looked into those wide eyes and gave up. “Alright. Fine. Let’s heat you up some milk, and I’ll tell you the Blackwood family bedtime story.” _Because this situation is so weird already, so why not?_

“Don’t tell the others about this okay?” he said as he, well, tucked her in. “They’d tease us for a year.”

“Okay, Martin.”

He sighed. “Alright, so my family bedtime story is a bit of a weird one. It’s um, do you know the story of the Tower of Babel?”

She shook her head. Probably not from a Christian cult, then. “So the story goes like this. After God killed most of the world’s population with a flood, the remaining people decided to build a tower to heaven. Some say they just wanted to get high enough to avoid another flood, and be safe. Others say they wanted to revenge themselves on him for the destruction. Still others say it was a matter of pride, that they thought themselves worthy of heaven and decided to build up to it. The motivations don’t matter; the point is, they united as one people for the grand project of building all the way up to heaven. And God saw their progress, and he was angry at their hubris, and struck the tower down. It sent its makers back to the earth, and to prevent them from ever being able to construct such a thing again, he scattered them all over the world and confused their tongues so that different groups wouldn’t understand each other. That’s the ‘official’ version. But according to my mum, who heard it from her dad…” Martin leaned in to whisper conspirationally, “they missed something very important. They cut the ending off the story, and confused the beginning for the end.

“See, here’s the thing about the tower of Babel: a vengeful God striking down a tower to heaven? Completely unnecessary to the story. God wouldn’t need to waste his time with such a task, because that tower was going to collapse. Any tower built to heaven by human hands would collapse. You know why?”

Mary shook her head.

“Because humans are builders. It’s not about the goal, it’s always about the activity. They would build that tower higher and higher until it collapsed under its own weight; they’d say ‘heaven is at this level’, and when they reach it, decide, ‘no, we can build higher; heaven must be higher’. They will build and build until something stops them, and that something is the weight of the tower itself. Because that’s just what we’re like. We go as far as we can. So they might build until the clay and sticks crumble. Or if they’re clever they’ll invent bricks and stonework before they get that high, and build even higher until the stones crumble. Unless they’ve invented steel and glass by then, and build skyscrapers so tall that the steel warps and collapses. They can make that tower a space elevator – metaphorically – and it won’t matter, they’ll keep pushing against the laws of physics until the tower is destroyed. God didn’t destroy the tower with a bolt of lightning and divine anger. He destroyed that tower when he made us a species of builders, determined to push against every limitation until it kills us, for the sheer joy of seeing how far we can go. Way back at the start of the story.

“The tower falls, and the only uncertainty is how much time we bought ourselves to indulge in the joy of building it, how high we got… and how much destruction the resulting debris is going to cause.

“When my mum used to tell this story to me, I’d get sad at this part, because it says something pretty depressing about the future, I think. About our exploding population and effect on the environment and all that. But she’d shake her head ans say it only sounds that way because she hadn’t told me the actual end of the story yet. God is at the beginning, making a people who will build until their tower collapses. The building and collapse is just the middle of the story. And do you know what the end is? What humans do after the tower collapses, after communication breaks down, after they find themselves lost and wandering through the rubble to the corners of the earth, unable to understand their neighbours?”

Mary shook her head again.

“Well, they wander around lost and sad for awhile. A generation, maybe. And then… every single time… they start to gather again. They greet each other in tones they can understand, if not words. And they start once again stacking bricks, pulling themselves closer to heaven. That’s what we are, you and me and everyone else out there, no matter how much we might fight and disagree and hurt each other or ourselves – we humans are builders, always ready to advance higher and higher just to see if we can.”

M artin leaned down and kissed Mary’s forehead, just like his mother used to do for him, before he realised what he was doing. He froze, but she hadn’t pushed him away. In fact, she was asleep. Or maybe pretending to sleep? It was hard to tell.

Either way, he left quietly, before things could get even more awkward.

\-------------------

  
  


Tim was surprised to discover that he was actually excited about getting back to work. He was returning to the place he’s nearly been killed by a worm monster, sure, but he was also returning to some kind of _normalcy_.

Within a few days, he was back into the routine; get a bunch of follow-up, do the follow-up, tease Sasha, move files from one box into a more appropriate box… oh, and the giant network of presumably Smirke-built tunnels under the institute, but that was a little less routine.

“You know,” Tim said idly as he and Martin sorted through a box of statements from the 1980s to pull out the handful of misfiled ones, “Smirke’s buildings have a significantly higher than normal rate of supernatural occurrences than normal.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Yeah, but we can be more sure of it now. Because the Smirke statements keep not recording to laptop, have you noticed that? In the tapes, Smirke keeps coming up.”

“So you’re saying this is proof that he was some kind of, I dunno, monster architect?”

“I don’t know if he was a monster. He was definitely into the occult, though. Have you read his occult writings? Weird stuff. I’m just saying that the fact that Jane decided to try to make a, a worm door or whatever down in those tunnels, is something we should probably be more concerned about.”

“Jane’s dead.”

“Yeah.” He glanced sidelong at Martin. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just… not sleeping well lately.”

“Aren’t you staying with Mary?”

“Yeah.”

“Ooh, and ‘not sleeping well’? Are you two – ”

“No! It’s just… well, it was really nice of her to let me stay with her, I guess. I shouldn’t gossip, she’s just...” Martin lowered his voice. “Weirder at home.”

Tim raised his eyebrows. “House full of weird cult stuff?”

“No. It’s kind of hard to explain. It doesn’t matter, I guess; different people are different. And it’s a lot better than staying in the archives. Or going home. Oh, I think Jon was asking about this one; what’s a 2013 file doing in this box?”

“This place is such a mess I don’t even question it any more. Here, I’ll take it to him. I’m headed that way anyway.”

Tim knocked gently on Jon’s office door. There was no reply, but he also didn’t hear Jon dramatically monologuing, so he probably wasn’t busy with anything important. “Hey, boss, I got – ”

Jon was collapsed over his desk in a pile of tapes, one hand clutched around a tape recorder. He was breathing fast and shallow.

“Oh, shit!” Already dialling emergency services with one hand, Tim shook his shoulder with the other. “Jon. Jon, you alright?”

He didn’t respond.

“Guys! Medical emergency in here!” Tim shouted before going through the standard first aid steps. Nobody seemed to be in earshot, so Tim sat down and waited for the ambulance.

As they waited, he noticed a piece of paper in Jon’s hand. It looked like he’d been taking notes and grabbed it before passing out. He tugged it free from Jon’s unresisting fingers, and nearly stopped breathing.

The first note read:

\- Circus (Gregor Orsinov, “Unknowing”, “The Stranger”)

Somewhere in this mess of tapes was information on Orsinov’s circus.

Tim had to find it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon is a stubborn idiot.

“Go home, Jon.”

“I can’t, Elias, I have work to do.”

“I am sure this institute will survive a slight delay in archival organisation, and I am equally sure that your four assistant can handle a bit of filing on their own.” Elias had to maintain a brisk pace to keep up with his Archivist who was walking rather faster than somebody should two days after waking from a 24-hour coma. “Honestly, I’m surprised they released you from hospital so early. But you definitely shouldn’t be up and about.”

“My brain scans came back fine. I’m fine.”

“You were in a coma. The fact that the scans don’t show any part of your brain as being dead does not mean that you’re fine. I’d rather not have a second head archivist drop dead in the Institute in as many years if it’s all the same to you!”

“Yeah, well, don’t shoot me and I’m sure we won’t have that problem,” his archivist snarled.

“Jon, are you accusing me of – ”

“Someone here did! And nobody seems to care that there’s a killer just, just wandering around here!”

“The police are handling it. And there’s no reason to think it was an institute employee anyway, Jon. You’ve read how… irrational… some of the statement-givers are; if any of them got a gun in – ”

“Then they wouldn’t have dragged her body into the secret tunnels and stashed it with a bunch of tapes, would they? Somebody here knew about the tunnels, knew about the tapes, had some reason to get rid of Gertrude – ”

“ – and what reason would anyone in the Institute have to stash tapes down there, rather than simply destroying them? This entire thing is irrational, Jon; it would be a mistake to jump to simple conclusions.”

“I don’t… I don’t know why,” his archivist lied. Ah, the boy was a bad liar; Elias would’ve noticed even if he hadn’t been watching him for some time. But he had been watching; he’d seen Jon open his drawer and frown at the incriminating hospital report in there, struggling with the idea that he should destroy it, and couldn’t bring himself to do so. So when comfronted with a pile of hidden evidence that a sensible criminal would have destroyed… he’d drawn the obvious conclusion. It had to be somebody in the same position as him. And he had, so far as Elias could tell, only suspected the archive staff rather than the Institute as a whole, meaning he’d already pinned down the effect as something specific to the archives. He was still putting on a show, pretending not to have noticed, lying to himself as if denying the truth could save him from it, but that would fade soon enough, if he genuinely thought his life was in danger.

He clearly wasn’t getting enough sleep, though, or he would’ve realised that that logic cleared all his assistants. They hadn’t been working in the archives when Gertrude had died. Elias considered dropping hints to that effect, but no; the paranoia was doing wonders for his archivist’s development. Except for the part where he’d almost killed himself overindulging on statements, but that was controllable.

Most things were, if you knew enough.

\-----------------------

  
  


When Jon got to his office, he found Gertrude’s tapes gone. He wasn’t surprised.

The aggravating thing was that anyone in the archives could’ve taken them. Tim was the obvious suspect; he’d found Jon, so he was the most likely one to have… poisoned him, or whatever he’d dome to make him pass out, but he wasn’t sure how he would have accomplished that. Martin had made his tea that morning, so he could’ve done it. As for the girls, Sasha had been conspicuously absent all day, and Mary… well, he knew she had a knack for sneaking into places. And she was here under a false name, for some reason; had she worked with Gertrude, disappeared after killing her, and now come back in disguise to get him? What would be the point?

None of it made sense. But the absence of the tapes at least proved one thing: his adversary was still here. He _was_ in danger.

Logically, he knew he should leave it alone. Gertrude had most likely been killed because she’d learned something, something dangerous; the safest thing for him to do was to stop prying.

But he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to find out what he wanted to know, and if he died in the attempt… well, he was just going to have to try very hard not to.

He was going to need those tapes back. Even his notes, scant as they were, were missing. And for that, he needed to know who took them. It was time to start seriously investigating his assistants.

\--------------------------

  
  


“He’s been _watching my house_ , Sasha.”

“Are you sure it’s him? Maybe – ”

“Maybe some other stalker with bad fashion sense is following me? Something’s wrong with his head, Sash. The Prentiss attack made him lose his marbles somehow.”

“He was pretty badly injured by – ”

“So was I! Do you see me doing a backflip over the edge of reality?”

“You’re drawing some kind of weird occult diagram right now.”

“That’s not relevant!”

“Isn’t it, though? A bit?”

“No. I’m trying to figure out the Millbank tunnels. Did you know there are no complete maps or blueprints of the prison? Anywhere?”

“Yes, I did, because I’m the one you asked to look, remember? Look, I think maybe we’ve all got some… unhealthy coping mechanisms… after the whole worm thing, that we need to…”

“ _You_ seem fine.”

Sasha bit her lip. She knew she was good at _seeming_ fine. “Why are you so interested in the tunnels, anyway?”

“Um, our place of work has a secret network of tunnels under it that nobody knew about? How are you _not_ interested?”

Sasha opened her mouth and nearly said something stupid, before realising – secret tunnels, Smirke… this was about Danny. Of course it was about Danny. She felt like an idiot for not realising that right away.

“Can I help?” she asked.

He looked surprised at the question, but answered. “Depends. Do you know where bossman stashed those tapes he’s been going through?”

“Tapes? What?”

“The tapes. From the notes, I think they might be Gertrude’s? They have something about the circus on them.”

“Oh. Anything… important?”

“I don’t know until I hear them. But they’re gone now.”

“If he’s looking at the circus, maybe you should – ”

“What, suggest to my paranoid stalker that maybe we should join forces? Yeah, I see that going well. Yesterday he asked me if I owned a gun, so I don’t – oh, Jesus.”

“What?”

“He just nipped around that corner. I think he saw me see him. He can’t even leave us alone for our goddamned lunch break? As soon as I get what I need, I’m getting the hell out of this place.” He opened his eyes comically wide, and leaned across the table to take Sasha’s hands in his in a joking parody of sincerity. “Come with me, Sasha!” he whispered dramatically. “We’ll run off together and take the world by storm! With your computer skills and my natural charm, we’ll become successful international art thieves, spend ten years building our romantically tense bond on high-stakes heist after high-stakes heist, do One Final Job to afford our own tropical island to retire to – ”

“And die tragically mid-heist?”

“No, no, no. We’re the protagonists, not the cops. It looks like we’re going to fail, but it turns out we secretly faked our deaths and are living happily ever after on our new private island.”

Sasha pretended to consider this. “Do we have good internet on our island?”

“The best! We’re so rich, we paid to get a cable run there.”

“Do you have any idea how expensive that would be?”

“We’re _so rich_ , Sasha!”

She giggled and pulled her hands away. “I’ll consider it. Although I recall a certain someone being very put out when I started looking for a new job.”

“Yeah, well, that was before we’d been stalked by worms. And our boss. And who knows what else is out there.”

“Yeah, well, who-knows-what-else or not, I have to get back to the office. I’ve got half a box of ‘real’ files to digitise and put into a proper database so they can be cross-referenced and accessed without having to dig through actual physical cardboard boxes, since some of us aren’t dinosaurs.”

“You own a _flip phone_ , Sasha.”

“Jealous.”

\--------------------

  
  


“I’m just worried about him,” Martin explained. “He wakes up after being unconscious for a whole day and just, just goes back to work? Is that even allowed? I know it was a week ago now, but what if there’s, I dunno, brain damage they didn’t find? And he’s always so tired! Have you seen how tired he is?”

“He needs more sleep for his brain to work properly,” Mary agreed.

“He does! But we can’t force him to sleep.”

“What if we gave him warm milk and a bedtime story?”

“Ha. No. I don’t think that would work.”

“We could knock him unconscious again.”

“Don’t even joke about that!”

“Then have you tried asking him nicely?”

“… What?”

“He is your friend, isn’t he? Friends do favours for friends, so maybe he will do you a favour and get some sleep.”

“Huh. I doubt it. I mean, I, I don’t know if Jon sees us as… Jon’s a bit of a closed-in guy, you know?”

“He owes me a favour,” Mary said firmly. “I will tell him to sleep.”

“I really don’t think that’ll…”

\-----------------------

  
  


“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“No. I already agreed to keep the tapes a secret.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To convince you to take some time off. Martin is very worried about you.”

“Ha. Sure he is.”

“Not sleeping enough is very bad for your health.”

“My health. Right. Mary, did you take Gertrude’s tapes out of this office?”

“No. I brought them to you. Why would I do that if I was going to take them away again?”

“To allay suspicion, maybe? Maybe you wanted them out of police hands and my request was a convenient excuse to get them without raising my suspicions. How can I trust anything you say?”

“You could just _ask me_.”

“Oh, yeah. Like I can trust any of you to be honest with me. At least one of you is lying to me, I’m sure, which means myself and the rest of you are in danger – ”

Mary stood up suddenly. “I don’t think you’re very good at being friends, Archivist,” she said. “You should ask Martin or Sasha for some advice on how to do it better.”

And she walked out.

Jon stared after her. It would be nice to have a bit of a rest. Take some time to recover.

After he figured out this whole Gertrude thing, he’d be sure to do that.

  
  



	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In our longest chapter so far, things are set in motion.

“If we pull this off,” Martin promised Tim, “he’ll leave you alone for several days at least.”

“Actually, yeah. That sounds good. If it’ll earn me some goddamned peace and quiet, I’m in.”

“Really? Oh. Good. Shh, here he comes!” He looked up, as did Elias and the other archival assistants assembled in the room around the large table.

Jon entered the room and froze. “What’s going on?”

“Sit down, Jon,” Elias said.

“I really am rather busy – ”

“Sit _down_ , Jon.”

He did, reluctantly.

“This is an intervention,” Martin began.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Jon went to stand again.

“If you’d rather it be a disciplinary hearing, Jon, we can certainly arrange it,” Elias said sharply.

Jon hesitated, then sat back down. “Fine. Say your piece.”

“Jon,” Sasha said gently, “since the Prentiss incident, you’ve been – ”

“Completely off the wall,” Tim cut in, earning several sharp looks.

“A bit erratic,” Martin corrected quickly, “and we’d really like – ”

“To not have to fire you,” Elias cut in.

“You’re not looking after yourself,” Mary said. “It’s making people worried.”

“Also, the spying and random murder accusations,” Tim added sourly. “Those are making people ‘worried’, too.”

“I’m not spy – ”

“You were watching my house.”

“You’ve been following me on my lunch breaks.”

“You searched my stuff. And said I was lying about a _murder_.”

“Yes, well, nobody else seems worried about the killer in our midst, so – ”

“Do you really think any of us would shoot someone?” Sasha asked. “And even if you did, do you think anyone here would try to kill you?”

“I don’t know! Maybe! You’re hiding something here; I know it. And what about the tapes, huh?”

“What tapes?” Martin asked.

Elias sighed. “Jon, this goes beyond an unhealthy work environment. It’s partly my fault, for letting it get this far. I should have been more insistent that you take more time off after the Prentiss attack, and I should definitely have pushed more for you to see a therapist – which I still recommend you do, by the way. The Institute’s insurance will cover the cost.”

“I don’t need therapy,” Jon snarled.

“You do,” Tim said. “There’s something actually seriously wrong with your brain. You’ve got some kind of… of clinical paranoia or something, and you definitely need – ”

“Not helping, Tim,” Elias said sharply. “Jon, I cannot force you to see a therapist, although I strongly recommend that you do. But I can force you to take some time off. One week, starting tomorrow. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be necessary, but since this is you we’re talking about, I’ll be revoking your security clearance until your week is up, so make sure you take everything you need home with you tonight. And if security catches you wandering around unauthorised, they will confiscate your keys, so to save us all a headache please resist the temptation.”

“Elias – ”

“No arguments, Jon. I expect to see you back here after one week, in a better and more constructive frame of mind, or I will be forced to pursue disciplinary action.”

“Do it, then. Fire me, if I’m such an inconvenience to you.”

“I’m going to assume that comment is a result of trauma and your obvious sleep deprivation. Good day, Jon. Everyone.” He left the room.

Jon levelled a glare at Martin. Martin could practically see the gears turning in his mind – he knew this little meeting was Martin’s fault. He was probably trying to figure out whether Martin was his enemy, trying to delay his investigation, whether this was some big plot against him.

For once, Martin didn’t care if Jon hated him, not if it was for getting him the care he needed. Martin had been in that position before, and it really wasn’t a big deal.

“I have work to do,” Martin said levelly, and walked out.

\-------------------

  
  


The week without a head archivist was fairly routine, the most notable difference being that nobody was telling them to go out and investigate things, so they got on with the task of sorting and digitising files. Martin moved out of Mary’s house, careful to “forget” key items that she would need but didn’t own such as basic cookware and a few towels, and was much more relaxed for it – he liked Mary just fine, but she was… weird… to live with. Part of it was that he kept expecting to wake up and see her watching him sleep again, although she did seem to be respecting his wishes on that. The rest of it was, well, everything else. Mary didn’t seem to have any hobbies, and she didn’t own books or have internet. She spent a lot of time at home doing, well, nothing. She’d been happy to watch movies with him, and she started cooking and cleaning after watching him do it, but she’d otherwise spend hours at a time in her bedroom, completely silent, which Martin knew to contain as little in the way of personal effects as her kitchen had when he’d moved in. Once, he’d seen her in there through the window, just standing in the corner and staring at the opposite wall.

He figured that this was probably typical behaviour, because he’d sometimes catch her doing it in the lounge room too – standing and staring at the wall, or sitting and staring at the black screen of her television without turning it on. He’d been reluctant to ask her about it (maybe she was praying, or something?) and he felt bad admitting it, but… he knew he’d feel better living somewhere else.

So it was with a sense of guilty relief that he moved into his new apartment.

Jon, too, had a productive week away. He hated to admit it, but his assistants had been right – he had needed rest. After a couple of days away from the Institute, and with a bit of sleep, the obsessive sense of being constantly watched had faded to something barely noticeable, and the lingering sense that someone nearby was hiding had disappeared completely. That second one he attributed to the fact that he was away from all his suspects and they were not, by definition, nearby, but the first at least helped him think more clearly, and after reviewing his notes, one thing became obvious: his archival assistant were probably all innocent.

Oh, they were all suspicious in little ways, but Jon could find something suspicious about everyone in the Institute if he tried. The fact was that none of them had any real connection to the archives before Gertrude’s death; hell, Mary hadn’t even worked at the institute, and Jon himself had convinced Tim to transfer down with him. And his whole suspicion relied on the idea that the… that the obsessions he’d been developing since moving down there were… well. The killer had hidden, but not destroyed, Gertrude’s tapes. He wouldn’t have understood that as a logical action, before moving down to the archives.

And then there were the… other factors, that left him with one very clear, very obvious suspect.

So on Sunday, Jon violated Elias’ explicit orders and snuck back into the Magnus Institute. He waited until late, until as many people as possible had gone home, wore his most un-Jon-like outfit, and projected an aura of I Know What I’m Doing as he completely avoided the archive, heading instead for Elias’ office. Jon didn’t know how to pick locks, but there were no security guards anywhere near the office, so instead he just pulled out the screwdriver he’d brought for this purpose and removed the lock from the door, careful to replace it behind himself. It was a good thing the Institute used such accessible locks; he’d hate to have to disassemble the hinges instead and have an entire door to rehang.

Inside the office, of course, most things were locked away. Elias’ safe wasn’t even worth trying, and a quick inspection of the locked desk drawers told him that it’d take someone with actual experience and skill at this sort of thing to easily get into those without leaving a trace. But Jon got lucky, when he opened one of the room’s unlocked cabinets and found a box of cassette tapes. He recognised the label. Gertrude’s tapes.

Elias had taken them, as expected.

Well then. That about wrapped things up, didn’t it?

Jon left them where they were, and went home. He had a lot of thinking to do.

\-----------------------

  
  


Sasha sipped her latte. She’d just spent an hour tracking down the details of some cultist Jon had asked her about, and had sent them off before it occurred to her that he was supposed to be avoiding work. Should she call him back and make him promise to stay home and rest? It probably wouldn’t accomplish anything.

So instead, she’d gone out for coffee with Mary. And left her laptop at home, to avoid her own workaholic tendencies.

Mary, it seemed, hadn’t been feeling similarly, because she put her own coffee down and reached into her own bag to pull out some folders that looked suspiciously like Magnus Institute case files.

“Did you bring statements here?” Sasha asked, snatching them out of her hands.

She nodded. “I’m trying to get through the – ”

“Mary, these things aren’t supposed to be taken out of the building.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“We’ll just… just take them back tomorrow, and I’m sure no one will notice.” She put them on the table. “But we’re not here to work, we’re here to hang out. How have you been?”

“I’m fine,” Mary said brightly. “I am going to buy a DVD player so that I can still watch movies even though Martin is gone.”

“A DVD player? God, and Tim calls me a dinosaur. Do you want my Netflix password?”

“What is a Netflix password?”

“Oh, dear. Oh, you poor, deprived thing. Let me introduce you to the world of stream-on-demand entertainment. You brought files, so I’m guessing you brought a laptop?”

They skimmed a few ads for TV programs before Mary pointed at one and said, “That is the same person as in this other one.”

“The same actor, yeah.”

“Martin’s movies also had the same person sometimes.”

“What kind of movies did you watch with Martin?”

“Martin said not to tell because Tim would make fun of him.”

Sasha laughed. “That sounds about right. Yeah, the same actors do lots of movies. It bothers me sometimes, if they have a distinctive style; I can’t see Jack Black in anything without just thinking of him as Jack Black instead of the character, right?”

Mary nodded. “He’s reluctant to let go of old masks.”

“I… guess so?” Sometimes Sasha thought Mary’s conversations were getting more, well, normal, and then she’d say something like that.

“I understand. They can be fun.”

“Oh, you’ve done some acting?”

“Yes.”

Sasha had looked at Mary’s resume after she joined the institute, of course, out of curiosity, but she couldn’t remember what her degree had been in. “Is that what you studied at college?”

“Yes.”

“You studied to be an actor, and ended up in paranormal research? That must have been a fun career trajectory. You should talk to Tim; he got here through publishing, of all things.”

Mary shrugged. “A mask is a mask. Just because he used to be in publishing doesn’t mean he can’t be an archival assistant now. Maybe he’ll choose to be somebody else tomorrow.”

“Yeah, he said the same. He’s thinking of quitting.”

“Good.”

Sasha looked at her in surprise.

“The Institute makes him sad.”

“I guess so. But he’s got things to… well. It’s his business. Not ours.”

They finished their coffees, and Mary left. Sasha was packing up her own things when she noticed that the files Mary had taken from the Institute were still sitting on the table. She’d have to return them. She flipped through them, out of curiosity, and froze.

Of the five files, three mentioned a large wooden table with geometric fractal designs etched into its surface. She remembered that table, seeing it in artefact storage, nearly getting lost in those lines… she didn’t have a laptop to record the statements and check their validity, but she didn’t need one. She knew the table was the real deal.

The stories were remarkably similar to Graham Folger’s story. Owners of the table would become increasingly paranoid and watchful, convinced that something was after them, until one day they dropped their guard and _something_ took their lives. The only survivor recorded in the statements was someone who managed to damage the centre of the table, which Sasha supposed explained the hole, although it was weird that it was so regular – had someone carved it out neatly to repair the table? They must have, because the table was definitely still doing its thing.

Jon had been getting increasingly paranoid and watchful, convinced that someone was after him.

When had that actually started? They’d blamed the Prentiss attack, and finding Gertrude’s body, but were the roots of the issue actually in the moment that table had been delivered to the Institute?

Delivered, with the lighter, to Jon. The table had been delivered to Jon.

Sasha didn’t leap to her feet and run out of the cafe. She slowly and deliberately continued to pack away her things. She had to be careful. She had to be thorough.

She needed a proper plan for how to save her boss.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IIIIIT'S TRAUMA TIME

It was remarkably easy to buy an axe in central London.

Martin held his nervously, considering for the first time that he’d never actually swung one. What if he… did it wrong? Missed and hit his leg or something?

“Don’t worry,” Sasha reassured him, shouldering her own axe and opening the trapdoor in the office floor. “We’ll be in and out, nice and quick.”

“Okay, but… why did you call me?”

“Backup. In case the table… well, it can be mesmerising. Last time I was down there, I nearly got lost in it, and something… I just need someone there, in case I get distracted. You probably won’t need to do anything.”

“Yeah, I get that, but why me?” Martin followed her down the wide stone steps. “I mean, so far as survival skill goes, I’m not – ”

“You survived Prentiss for two weeks,” Sasha pointed out. “And afterward. She didn’t get any worms in you, and one got in _me_ and I had to be saved by a monster. I know you can handle this, but I have no idea if Mary can. But if you’re scared – ”

“I’m coming,” Martin said firmly. “Obviously I’m coming. We’re saving Jon here. But what about Tim?”

Sasha’s grimace was barely visible in the reflected light of their torches. “Yeah, see, I’m not sure Tim would say yes to risking his life to save Jon right now.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.”

“But once we trash this thing, Jon should recover, and we can all be awkward about it and slowly rebuild trust over the next several months. Should be fun.”

Martin wished they didn’t have to go through the tunnels. Artefact storage had a door. But it was staffed by people who probably wouldn’t just let two archival assistants carrying axes stride on through, and when the ruined table was found neither of them wanted their names on the sign-in sheet. So the creepy worm-corpse-filled tunnels it was.

Artefact storage was actually very close to the archives if you didn’t account for all those pesky walls in the way, so it was a short and uneventful journey before Sasha and Martin hacked through a piece of flimsy plasterboard and into the room beyond.

“This seems insecure,” Martin pointed out. “I mean, not just for people like us getting in, but… I felt a lot safer when I thought sturdier walls were holding the power of these things in.”

“I’m not sure that even lead or titanium walls would do much to contain otherworldy horror magic,” Sasha pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess. That sure makes me feel better about working in such close proximity to these things.”

“Come on, it’s near the front door.”

Martin had never been in artefact storage before. He tried not to look too closely at the various items and containment boxes on the shelves and lining the aisles around him. What bothered him the most, he supposed, was how many things weren’t in containment boxes; ancient looking necklaces lay displayed as if in a jewellery shop, and in one corner was what he could only describe as a massive golden throne, glinting in the light of their torches. Someone could just… walk in and sit in it. What would happen?

“There it is.” Sasha pointed out the table, and Martin was relieved to see that it was near the door, so if something really went wrong…

“If something goes wrong, don’t run for the door,” Sasha said. “It’ll be locked from the outside this time of night.”

Oh. Fantastic.

Sasha raised her axe. And paused. Martin saw her eyes glaze over.

He didn’t bother trying to shake the entranced woman holding an axe. Careful not to look at the table, he simply shut off both of their torches.

Sasha took a deep, shuddering breath in the darkness. “Where’s – ”

“Right in front of you.” Martin took her wrist and guided her hand to the wood of the table.

“Okay. Stand back, I can’t see you.”

Martin got well out of axe-swinging range and waited until he heard the grunt, the swing, the splintering of wood. Sasha swung again and again, until the table had to be a pile of kindling.

“I oWe YoU mY tHaNkS.”

Martin clicked his torch on, and immediately regretted it.

The… person… thing… in front of them was

Well. It looked kind of like a person, in a way; a person that had been all stretched out to the point that limbs were barely recogniseable as limbs, and it didn’t move so much as it was somewhere one moment and then you realised that no, it was actually closer than that, like an image suddenly jumping out of a magic eye puzzle.

“Run!” Sasha screamed, taking her own advice.

“YeS. yOu ShOuLd.”

Martin didn’t need a third invitation.

The pair of them ran through artefact storage, almost immediately getting lost in the maze of artefacts and shelves. But finding a way out wasn’t nearly as important as staying away from that thing who stalked after them, row by row, without really moving.

“I oNlY nEeD oNe Of YoU,” is said. “Do YoU wAnT tO cHoOsE, oR sHoUlD i?”

Martin, torch once again turned off and hand clutched around Sasha’s, tried not to breathe so loudly. He still had an axe. So did Sasha. Would it do any good?

More to the point, to wield an axe, even one-handed, and a torch to see the monster with, they’d need to let go of each other. And when fighting something known to take over people’s lives, they definitely shouldn’t let go of each other.

Sasha squeezed his hand gently and began to lead the way backwards, step by slow, silent step.

“YoU cAn OnLy HiDe FoR sO lOnG, yOu KnOw.”

And then one of them, Martin wasn’t sure who, bumped into a shelf in the dark. Something heavy dropped off and hit the ground with a loud thud.

“ThErE yOu ArE!”

No sense in hiding now. The torches snapped back on and the pair ran, hand in hand, for where Martin was pretty sure the tunnel entrance was. Could they lost the thing in the tunnels? Maybe. Everything seemed to get lost in the tunnels, although being caught down there with limited batteries, a monster somewhere in the shadows and no knowledge fo where the exit was didn’t sound too great, either.

The monster was there, right in front of them; as one the pair dove sideways and slid over a shelf that had looked empty, scattering something invisible all over the floor. No time to worry about that; Sasha was pulling Martin to his feet and they were running, running for the tunnels, their feet slipping and stumbling and scattered invisible things.

Martin stumbled sideways into an open cardboard box containing, of all things, a stack of ancient film reels, his hand slipping from Sasha’s. And then, the monster had him.

It pinned him to a wall with one… hand, he supposed… and Martin could feel the tips of his extremities burn white, the edges of his vision burn white, the edges of his memories burn white.

“YeS,” the monster breathed quietly. “tHiS wOuLd Do NiCeLy.”

What would?

“YoU lOoK cOmFoRtAbLe EnOuGh.”

Who did?

“MaRtIn, IsN’t It?”

Who was Martin?

“BuT. i SuPpOsE i OwE yOu A fAvOuR fOr FrEeInG mE. sO i WiLl GiVe YoU a SeCoNd ChAnCe.”

The monster released the thing it was pinning against the wall. The thing dropped to the floor, gasping.

“RuN, mArTiN.”

Martin, Martin, that’s what the thing was called. Martin. Martin stumbled to his feet, stared at the monster for a long second, and then turned and bolted into the tunnels.

“Martin!” Sasha emerged from a tunnel and grabbed his wrist. “Are you okay?!”

“Um, no? But we have to run, it’s still – ”

“ReAdY oR nOt, HeRe I cOmE!”

“Shitshitshitshitshit!”

They got lost immediately, of course.

Martin spied a crack in a tunnel wall that might be a door and somehow managed to squeeze his bulk through it, pulling Sasha through behind him. A quick sweep of their torches showed they’d ended up in a small room, with no other exits, so they turned them off and waited, trying not to make any noise.

“CoMe OuT, cOmE oUt WhErEvEr YoU ArE!”

Martin bit into the skin of his hand, willing himself not to wimper. He could feel Sasha shaking uncontrollably beside him. Something was very slowly scraping its way through the entrance to the room. Martin raised his axe in two trembling, sweaty hands, ready to… well, die, presumably, but while swinging an axe, at least. Then Sasha behind him suddenly stiffened, grabbed his arm, and pulled him backwards through a doorway that he definitely hadn’t seen when sweeping the room with his flashlight.

They were in a corridor. Not the ruined, natural-looking corridors of the tunnels; this was like a maintained corridor in a hotel put together by the world’s worst interior designer. If was brightly lit with electric lighting, and carpeted, admittedly in a nauseating yellow colour that clashed terribly with the swirling green pattern on the wallpaper. Martin spun to face the monster behind them, but there was nothing there, not even a door – just more of the corridor.

“Oh, where are we now?” he muttered, while a high-pitched laugh he didn’t recognise echoed down the hall.

\--------------------

  
  


Elias opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling, and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

The first half was pretty straightforward. He’d watched Mary draft the false statements and slip them to Sasha, and as much as it grated him that she’d be so rude as to besmirch the archives with false statements like that when he’d been nothing but accommodating, he had to admit that the false effects of the table she’d laid out were convincing to someone with Sasha’s limited information. He’d watched them destroy the table, watched Clark hunt them through artefact storage and into the tunnels, watched Michael follow them and then… lost them.

Which could mean several things. It was very hard to actually see much of what happened in the tunnels, so he wasn’t sure exactly why the two archival assistants had dropped off his radar. Clark might have killed them, but he doubted it; Mary had made it pretty clear that she was using them, and while the life thief seemed unable to resist the temptation to grab a little free terror from the pair, it didn’t seem the type to repay her help by killing her ‘friends’. But it was possible he was wrong on that point. It was hard to tell with monsters.

Michael might have taken them. If so, why? He’d helped the archive crew against Prentiss, so it was possible he’d move to save them from Clark, too. Or he could’ve just been bored and decided to eat them. Elias didn’t think he’d be so bold as to eat two people belonging so clearly to the Eye from within the Eye’s centre of power, but Spiral entities were even harder to predict than Stranger ones, so it was still a faint possibility.

Or, the pair might simply have taken a turn down a tunnel that had moved, and Elias had lost track of them. In which case, they’d either eventually emerge, or they’d die down there, and there wasn’t much that Elias could do about either scenario.

Mostly, he was just annoyed at the timing. Couldn’t Mary have waited another week to break the table? Couldn’t she have found a way to send Jon? Michael had already stabbed Jon, but a little chase through artefact storage with a monster who would probably avoid actually killing him would’ve been an excellent way to get him marked by the Stranger. A perfect, low-risk method of gaining a mark, wasted.

At this point, it looked like Elias really was going to have to rely on a dancing circus.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tim is slightly upset.

“Take my mercy, Archivist, and leave.”

Jon didn’t need telling again. He got the hell out of Mike Crew’s house. Didn’t even wait to say goodbye.

Upon reflection, going to known superpowered serial killers for information probably hadn’t been the smartest move, but it had been the only one he really had available. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tip his hand to Elias until he absolutely had to, and nobody else seemed to know what was going on. Now, for his efforts, he had very little new information, a lot of confirmed suspicions, a burned right hand, and a lingering sense of dread as he walked down Mike’s front steps and wondered, for half a second, whether his other foot would hit the ground.

Jon had learned that, compared to Jude and Mike at least, he was a small, naive fish in a very big pond, and he was starting to think it might be best to keep out of the bigger fish’s way, if he could help it. But he probably wasn’t going to. He could put that obsessive need to know, to witness, into a logical framework now, one he most certainly didn’t like, but he wasn’t sure it was one he could resist.

\----------------

  
  


“Did you ever think it would end like this?” Martin asked as they paced the endless corridors.

“Yes,” Sasha admitted. “I mean, not recently. But back when I worked in artefact storage, I’d read about the effect of some horrible thing we were testing, and there was always the worry that something like this would happen. Bit of a surprise for an archiving job, though.”

“Should we start… I don’t know, hacking the place to pieces again?”

Sasha shrugged, “Didn’t seem to make much difference the other times.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “How long have we been in here, do you think?”

“I don’t know, Martin. I didn’t know last time you asked, either.”

“Okay, but… do you think it’s been in the range of hours, or the range of days? Because it feels to me like it’s been days, and I’m… starting to get worried.”

Sasha shot him a look. She knew Martin wasn’t stupid, but some of the things he said… “We’ve been in a maze of nightmare corridors for days and you’re just now starting to get worried?”

“Yeah. Because I’m not hungry or thirsty. Are you?”

Sasha opened her mouth. Closed it again. She hadn’t thought of that.

“When we first got in here and couldn’t find a way out, I was terrified we were going to die in here,” Martin said quietly. “But now I’m starting to worry that… maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll never die in here.”

“Yeah, well… let’s put a pin in that, and check back in a century,” Sasha tried to joke. It fell flat. “Anyway, there’s always more halls and more doors.” She yanked a random door open. “Maybe behind this one – holy shit.”

On the other side of the door was the archives. Tim sat with a book open on the desk in front of him, staring at them open-mouthed.

Sasha and Martin bolted through the door, and Tim scooted his chair back, raising the heavy tome like a weapon. Sasha froze, realising what the scene looked like to Tim – two haggard, red-eyed people leaping out of the wall at him, wielding axes.

She put hers down, and raised her empty hands. “Chill out, Tim; it’s just us.”

He lowered the book. “Sasha. Martin. What the hell? You’ve been gone for days! Where have you been?!”

“That’s a very good question, one I’d also love the answer to,” Martin said.

“Me too, to be honest.” Sasha pinched her nose. “It was something to do with Michael, I think. I heard him laugh when we went in.”

“Michael? Creepy monster Michael who showed you the CO2 trick?”

“Yeah.”

“He saved us again?” Martin asked.

“I guess so? To be perfectly honest, I really hope not to run into him a third time.”

“He saved you? What _happened_? And why do you both have axes?”

Sasha exchanged a glance with Martin.

“We’ll tell you,” Martin promised, “if you promise not to, um… freak out?”

“Not to – ”

He was interrupted by a door opening – a normal door, this time, and Jon walking into the room. He looked like he’d gotten some sleep, at least, but there was something serious in his eyes, and one hand was wreathed in bandages.

“Ah, good,” he said. “Most of you are here. Where’s Mary?”

“She went to get a cup of tea,” Tim said. “Nice to see you showing up at the end of a crisis, as usual.”

“The end of a…? Okay. Look.” Jon took a deep breath and rubbed his temples with his good hand. “I owe you all an apology. I’ve not been… I’ve not been fair, to any of you, and I’ve done some investigating, and we need to talk. All of us. So let me know when she gets back, alright?”

Then he turned and headed to his office.

“Oh, like hell I’m putting up with this,” Tim snarled, leaping to his feet and following after him.

Sasha looked at Martin. “I think I hear somebody calling our names way over at the other end of the building,” she said conversationally.

“You know, I think I hear that, too. Let’s go.”

\--------------------

  
  


Jon had barely sat down at his desk when Tim burst into the room. “That’s what you’ve got to say?” he snapped. “Sorry everyone, let me go mope in my office?”

“We do have a lot to talk about, but it’s very serious and I’d rather talk to everyone at – ”

“Sasha and Martin were missing for three days! What were you doing then?”

Missing? What? “Are they alright?”

“Seems it, no thanks to you. You weren’t even – ”

“ – Here, yes, and whose fault is that, Tim? You were part of the group who forced me out for the week, as I recall. A lot of dangerous and terrible things are happening right now, but I’m not sure what you expect me to do about any of – ”

“Anything! Anything other than falling apart and turning into an unreliable, paranoid lunatic would be great! Any kind of leadership, anything that doesn’t make you yet another thing the rest of us have to watch out for, would be fantastic.”

 _I suspect that won’t be possible,_ Jon thought.

“I have had it up to here with you, and with this whole place. The worms, your creepy stalker nonsense, now whatever Sasha and Martin stumbled into… I am so close to just walking, you have no – ”

“Then do it,” Jon said.

That threw him off balance. “What?”

“If you want to quit, quit. I’ll make sure you get paid through the month. I’ll write you a glowing reference for wherever you want to go next. We can go get the forms from Elias right now.” He leaned forward. “Just say the words, Tim.”

Tim hesitated. “I… I can’t. Not yet. I have things I have to do here, things I need the Institute – ”

“Is that the real reason?”

“No.”

“Then why won’t you quit?”

“I _can’t_.” Realisation swept across his face. “I… I really can’t. Why can’t I quit?”

“I’m not sure,” Jon admitted, leaning back. “I can’t, either. I was hoping that wouldn’t apply to you, but I guess that was too much to hope for.”

“Hoping that what wouldn’t apply to me? That what wouldn’t apply, Jon?”

“I don’t… exactly know, yet? I’m getting the shape of it, but the details… well, it seems we’re all trapped, so – ”

“Then fire me.”

“I can’t.”

“You won’t, you mean. Whatever’s going on here, I guess you need somebody running around, doing your – ”

“I mean I _can’t_. I already tried. I can’t even put the pen to the form without dropping it, and you don’t want to know what happens if I try to do it electronically.”

“Oh. Is that what happened to your hand?”

“No; that was me being an idiot.”

“That sounds about right.” Tim looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wait, you tried to fire me?”

“Of course. I tried to fire all four of you, weeks ago.”

“Why?!”

“Because I thought one of you was a killer! Which meant that myself and all the others were in danger! I couldn’t seem to get myself out, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave everyone else in danger too if I could help it! Turns out I can’t. And you can’t leave either, so… I guess that’s it. We’re stuck in this place.”

“So you decided to make the choice for us, by firing us.”

“None of you would believe you were in danger. Would you have believed me if I said I couldn’t quit? Would you have taken anything I said seriously?”

“… No, probably not. But you’ve decided we’re not killers?”

“Yeah.”

“So who do you think did it? Did she have any sinister assistants you wanna stalk?”

“Yes, actually. And I did try to find them. One guess as to what happened to them all.”

“… They’re dead, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. All under mysterious circumstances.”

“Well shit.”

“Yeah.” Jon took a deep, calming breath. “My main suspect for killing Gertrude is Elias. But to be perfectly honest, that’s… mostly because I don’t have any other suspects. I mean, he hired us; it’s his institute. We have to assume that he knows we’re trapped, so he trapped her, too, so why would he want to kill her?”

“You were saying you thought she found out something dangerous, perhaps?”

“Yeah. Maybe. And he does have her tapes, so – ”

“They’d be the tapes you were taking notes on when you passed out?”

“Yeah. I broke into his office. He’s got them stashed in there.”

“You didn’t… steal them back?”

“Of course not. I didn’t want him to know I’d been in. Until I know exactly how dangerous he is and what… what the point of any of this is, I’d rather play dumb. Although I don’t know how possible that is, here. Do you ever feel like you’re being watched, in this place?”

Tim laughed hollowly. “All the time.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I should’ve expected sinister nonsense once we found out we were built on top of the Millbank tunnels. Did you know Robert Smirke designed that place?”

“Yes, you’ve said.”

“And this is what you wanted to gather us all to tell us about? That not only does this place suck, but we’re all basically stuck here?”

“Yes.” Jon hesitated. He could leave it there. He could talk to the other assistants, tell them this much, and then… move on.

But they deserved the truth.

“There’s… more,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Of course there is.”

“You’re really not going to like it.”

“Same as everything else so far, then.”

“Yes. Well.” Jon hesitated. “So, you’ve read a lot of the statements here.”

“Pretty big part of the job.”

“Right. And you’ve seen… a lot of them involve… people. Or things that used to be people. Like Jane Prentiss. Or, or Simon Fairchild, or whatever’s going on with the Lukases.” He looked awkwardly down at his desk, but not before he saw Tim’s eyes widen with realisation as he took a step back.

“Jon, what are you telling me?”

“Well, I’m not… I’m not sure of all the details yet, exactly but – ”

“Who did you kill?!”

“Nobody! What? No! I haven’t… I haven’t hurt anybody.”

“ _Yet_. Everyone in those statements, they always kill, or at least hurt, people.”

“Yeah, or _they wouldn’t be in the statements_. That’s a confirmation bias if I ever saw one. I haven’t done anything, Tim. I just… I might kind of have powers now?”

“Evil powers.”

“I… I suppose so, yes.”

“What can you do?”

“I can make people tell me things. I mean, when I ask questions, people answer them truthfully. Not ‘letter of the law’ kind of truth; they… they make an effort to be honest. Clear.” He curled his injured hand. “Even when they really don’t want to be.”

“Bullshit.”

“Fine. Think of a number between one and one hundred, and if I can get it first try, you accept what I’m telling you. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“What number are you thinking of?”

“Thirty-seven. Wait; that doesn’t count. I was distracted. I didn’t really have any reason to keep that from – ”

“Do you really want me to prove it with something you actually want to keep from me, Tim?”

“ … No. Okay, so… so this means what, exactly?”

“It’s wrapped up in being the archivist of the Magnus Institute, apparently. There are… powerful fear gods, I guess, out there, and apparently the archives serves one of them.”

Tim nodded wearily. “From everything we’ve got so far, my guess would be the Ceaseless Watcher?”

Jon froze. “How do you – I mean, I didn’t expect you to know that name, Tim.”

“I _was_ working in paranormal research before you brought me down here to the archives.”

“So was I, and I certainly hadn’t heard of the Beholding.”

Tim rolled his eyes and left the room. Jon assumed the conversation was over, but Tim returned a moment later, a thick library book in his hands. He opened it to a bookmarked page, set it in front of Jon, and left again.

Well. That was that then, apparently.

Jon looked down and began to read _Balance and Fear:_ _A Treatise On Smirke’s Taxonomy._


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim shares with the class. Mary promotes self-care.

While Jon was busy reading, Tim filled in the rest of the crew. They stared at him.

“Seriously?” Martin asked.

“Yep.”

“We’re like… trapped here? Are you sure?”

Tim shrugged. “Try to quit.”

“I already have,” he mumbled. “Months ago.”

Sasha bit her lip. “And Jon’s…?”

“A fear-eating spy monster. Yup. Explains a lot of his recent creepy behaviour, doesn’t it?”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Martin cut in. “He was… he was scared, that doesn’t mean he… he wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t what, Martin? Trap a bunch of people in a basement and make their lives hell with constant stalking and accusations?”

“He didn’t trap us here! Elias – ”

“Elias isn’t the one who suggested that I transfer to the archives.”

“Nobody did any of this on purpose.”

“You seem to think that matters a lot more than I do.”

Just then, Jon walked into the room. His gaze flicked over the four assembled faces, landing on Tim. “So you’ve already told them, then?”

“Yep.”

“Everything?”

Tim knew his smile was smug. He didn’t care. “Filled them in completely, boss.”

“I would have liked to explain.”

Tim spread his hands wide. “Explain away.”

“We’ll deal with this, Jon,” Martin promised. “We’ll, we’ll find some way to reverse whatever’s doing this to you, and…”

“Nothing’s happening to me,” Jon snapped. “Well, I suppose it is, but I’m not… I’m sure Tim made it sound a lot worse than it is.”

“Sure,” Sasha said, sounding unconvinced. “So what happens now?”

“Honestly? I have no idea,” Jon admitted. “I thought… I thought finding out who killed Gertrude would answer all my questions, or at least _why_ since I’m reasonably sure it was Elias, but I’m starting to think it probably doesn’t matter. I guess we’re just… here now? Until we find a way to escape.”

“I say we set the whole place alight,” Tim suggested. “Take it all down with us.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, actually,” Martin cut in. “It sounds kind of um… suicidal?”

Tim shrugged. “We’re already dead.”

“That’s a bit of a pessimistic view for – ”

“No, it’s an accurate one. We’re stuck here for the rest of our lives, Martin, and do you know what that means? It means that everything else is just a matter of time.”

“Everything is always a matter of time,” Mary said, sounding puzzled. “And everyone is trapped by circumstance.”

“That cheery note aside, it’s particularly acute in our case. This is our lives now. We’re in this basement until something kills us; until a woman made of worms eats us or we starve in an endless tunnel or monsterboss here unhinges and eats our brains.”

“I’m not going to – ”

“Shut up. The only choice we have in the matter is how long it takes and how many of the bastards we take with us. So I say, yeah – revenge. Might as well take our killers with us while they take their sweet time savouring the kill.”

“I’m sure we can find something a little more constructive to do with our lives than immediately dying in an inferno,” Jon said drily. “I for one would like a lot more information on the situation before we proceed.”

“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you, Archivist?”

“… That wasn’t fair.”

“Why don’t you just ask for information?” Mary asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Ask Elias. You said you wanted to know if he killed Gertrude and why. And he trapped you here. So why not just go and ask?”

“I’d rather play dumb with him for as long as possible. He’s probably… dangerous.”

Mary frowned. “This place serves the Ceaseless Watcher. How do you intend to keep secrets here if you’re going to talk about them openly?”

“She’s right,” Sasha said. “He’s probably got spy cameras in here or something.”

“Surveillance cameras don’t work down here,” Jon said. “It’s been tried.”

“And who told you they didn’t work? Elias?”

“Good point. Alright. I’ll go talk to him now. You guys – ”

“I’m coming with you,” Tim said, getting to his feet. “I want to hear this for myself.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“I thought I already made it clear that I don’t give a shit.”

“I think we should all go,” Martin said. “I mean, if we’re trapped here together, maybe forever, then we should all be… on the same page.”

Jon sighed. “What are my chances of convincing you all that staying behind is the better option?”

Four voices chorused back various iterations of “Absolutely none.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

\---------------------------

  
  


Elias sighed and reluctantly closed his laptop. Could Jon’s timing have been any worse? He was right in the middle of a spreadsheet.

Well, this was going to happen eventually, he supposed. Best to get it out of the way early. Every single Archivist did this, and they were always so angry about it… he should just make pamphlets. So You’ve Become An Eldritch Servant of Terror.

Waste of time now, since he planned on Jon being the last Archivist, but eh. Hindsight.

The archive crew stormed in, and Elias looked up. “Ah. Jon. And you’ve brought everybody, I see. Good, that’ll save a lot of back-and-forth.”

“Do you know why we’re here, Elias?”

Elias felt the compulsion creep through his mind, free his tongue. He could probably have resisted it, he thought; Jon’s power was developing and his control was of it was almost nonexistent. He might have been able to dodge, or deflect, and part of him wanted to, just to answer the question of whether he could, get a measure of Jon’s power.

But he didn’t. If he _could_ lie to Jon, that wasn’t something to recklessly let Jon know with a petty show of power.

“Yes. I believe you’re here to shout a lot of poorly thought out and misdirected questions at me, and probably get quite upset when you don’t like the answers. Should we get this over with, then?”

“Did you kill Gertrude?”

Elias almost laughed. “ _That’s_ your priority? Very well. Yes, I killed Gertrude Robinson, and I did it because she planned to destroy the archives. It was something of a tragic loss, but I obviously couldn’t allow that to happen.”

“Because they’re important to the Beholding.”

Elias sighed. “Is that a question? Until your control improves, Jon, you’ll get better results if you actually phrase things as questions. Phrasing is important.” He glanced at Jon’s bandaged hand. “Although I suspect you’ve learned that lesson already. When I gave you a week off it was with the expectation that you’d keep out of trouble. What did you _do_?”

Jon ignored this. “What did you do with Gertrude’s tapes?”

“I gave them to security. They’re in storage, and I don’t know which storage room they’re in, so you won’t be able to get that out of me, I’m afraid.”

“Why did you take them?”

“Because I wasn’t going to sit back and watch you kill yourself, Jon,” Elias said sharply.

“… What?”

“You have many traits that make you ideal for this position, but moderation is not one of them. As soon as you got a hold of those things, you tried to listen to four in one week and put yourself in the hospital. _And then came straight back to try to listen to more_. Generally, Jon, I don’t consider it my place to micromanage the Archivist’s affairs, but I’m not going to lose you at this stage to an information overdose. Do you have any idea how difficult you would be to replace?”

This didn’t seem to be the answer that his archivist was expecting. He spluttered for a few seconds before saying, “Well, you could have just warned me.”

Elias sighed again. “Come on, Jon; you’re smarter than that. You really think I’d deprive you of the chance to discover things for yourself? If you want any chance of growing in power – ”

“I don’t!”

“A comfortable lie, I’m sure, and one that might be a bit more believable if you hadn’t been throwing your power around since the moment you realised you had it. But whether you want to or not, Jon, you are going to need that power if you want to have any hope of protecting yourself, your friends, or anybody else from what is coming.” He put up a hand. “And before you ask me why, I should caution you that if you get that sort of information from me I believe that you will fail to protect anyone. I cannot hold your hand through this, not if you want to be strong enough to survive.”

“I’m going to need those tapes, then. They’re important, aren’t they?”

“I believe so, although I haven’t heard most of them. But as I’ve already said, I’m not going to give you something to kill yourself with. I’ll have security release them to you three at a time. But if you put yourself in danger again…”

“I’ll be careful,” he snapped.

“Doubtful, judging my your behaviour so far, but I suppose it’ll have to do. Now. Is there anything else? I really am rather busy, I’m afraid.”

Reluctantly, the archival staff shuffled out. Elias got back to his spreadsheet, but now his flow had been broken. Why did Jon’s timing always have to be so inconvenient?

Well. It was nearly lunchtime, and the break room near Accounting was currently empty. If he was quick, he could nip in and reheat his fish in their microwave right before the lunch rush started.

\------------------------------

  
  


Martin was cross-referencing some Hilltop Road statements when he noticed Mary watching him from across the room.

“Hmm?”

“You’re not happy.”

Martin laughed bitterly. “What gave it away?”

“Your general posture, lessened rate of speaking, current tone of voice and – ”

“Of course I’m not happy, Mary! I just came out of a nightmare I thought I was going to die in, or more worryingly _live forever in_ , only to learn that, surprise! I’m in a different one! I’m freaking out! We’re all freaking out! Why aren’t you freaking out?”

“Would that help?”

“I don’t know! It makes me feel better!”

“It looks like it makes you feel worse. This is the sort of thing people are supposed to go out and get blind drunk about, right?”

“Yeah, I… I don’t think anyone really wants to spend time together right now.”

“Don’t sad people spend time with friends to feel better?”

“It’s really not that simple. I’ve spent the last three days with no one but Sasha, and Tim’s… not friendly right now, and Jon’s Jon, and you’re… you… and I think being around anyone right now is just a… reminder, of how stuck we are.”

“Were you planning to go anywhere else?”

“Well, no. But choosing to be somewhere is different from being trapped there. You should know, right? You ran away from… you know.”

“I came here.”

“And now you’re trapped here instead.”

“Have you slept recently?”

“Well, no; I’ve been trapped in – ”

“Go home and sleep,” Mary said firmly. “You’ll feel better with some sleep, some food and some water. And longer term, with some exercise and sunlight.”

“None of that is going to solve this whole evil archives problem.”

“Would solving that make you feel better?”

“Yes!”

“Do you have a way to solve it?”

“No!”

“These things will also make you feel better, and you can do them.” She reached into her desk and handed him a library book. He glanced at the title: 101 Classic Bedtime Stories. “To help you sleep,” Mary explained.

Martin couldn’t help but laugh. He knew himself well enough to know that in a day or so, he’d be doing what Mary was doing; trying to talk, trying to make everyone feel better about everything. It was weird for someone to beat him to it.

“Thank you, Mary. I’ll… I’ll try and get some sleep. You should, too.”

“I will try,” she promised.

That night, struggling to sleep, Martin turned the library book over in his hands. It didn’t contain his bedtime story, of course; no book did. And that story contained all the advice he needed right now, didn’t it? When you find yourself in the ruins of the tower, you get up and start building with whatever you have, because that’s what humans do.

Everyone was falling apart, and the only thing they had was each other. Gertrude had met a bad end. Her assistants had all died young, mysteriously, and presumably badly. If they were trapped together, their only strength was going to be each other.

And he couldn’t keep them together. They wouldn’t _listen_ to him. Nobody ever did.

He could imagine Mary’s reaction to something like that. She’d look puzzled and say something like, “Then be someone they will listen to, instead.” Like anything was ever that easy.

But he could try.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim gets a new gameplan.

“Tim’s losing it,” Martin told Sasha quietly. “Look at him.”

Nobody had seen Tim for four days. Then, that morning, he’d walked in, said he’d been in Malaysia, and refused to answer any questions about it before sitting glumly at his desk and getting to work.

“Yeah, well, I can hardly blame him,” she said. “I’m half-tempted to try to burn this place down myself.”

“So Elias can shoot you three times in the chest and hide you in a tunnel surrounded by mysterious tapes?”

“Hey, if you’re gonna go, go dramatically.”

“You have to talk to Tim. He hates Jon, he won’t listen to me, and anything Mary would say would just make him angry. You’re the only person here he respects.”

“I’m not sure what you expect me to say, Martin. He’s stuck here. We’re stuck here. I don’t have a way out.”

“He doesn’t need a way out.”

Sasha shook her head. “Martin, there’s simply no way he’s ever going to be okay with – ”

“He doesn’t need a way out,” Martin repeated. “He just needs the hope of one. Here’s what you need to say to him…”

Ten minutes later, Sasha set a fresh coffee in front of Tim and sat down. “Hey.”

He looked up, red-eyed, from the folder he was perusing. “Oh. Hi.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Well, none of Jon’s three tapes right now are about circuses, so it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Yeah. About this whole… thing. You seem to know more about what’s going on than the rest of us.”

“I don’t know anything about what’s going on.”

“You know a lot about this… fear power thing? That this place serves?”

“Smirke’s taxonomy?” Tim shrugged. “We’re right underneath the best paranormal library in the world. The information’s right there.”

“Tim…”

“Don’t tell me to cheer up. Don’t. I’m not going to sit around, and smile, and play nice, and pretend that solves anything. This place is evil, Sasha, and we’re stuck here; Jon’s turning into a monster, and we might be, too, and even if we’re not there’s just a whole bunch of stuff that’s going to keep happening until something kills us. We can’t run away – I tried. We can’t quit. We can’t be fired – ”

“Says who?” Sasha asked.

“What? Jon said – ”

“ – That he can’t fire us. But Jon’s not the one in charge of all of this, is he?”

Finally, Tim met her eyes. Realisation dawned. “You don’t think…?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying, our information is incomplete.”

“Yeah. I suppose it is.”

Sasha left him to his thoughts. As she passed Martin in the hall, she muttered to him, “You’ve unleashed chaos here today. I hope you realise this.”

“Oh, dear,” he said, deadpan. “How will the archives ever recover. I feel terrible.”

“Where did this mischievous streak come from?”

“Mischievous? Me? I’m not the one who destroyed a valuable supernatural artefact with an axe, and I’m certainly not the one who’s going to do whatever Tim is cooking up. I’m an accessory to mischief, at best.”

\----------------

  
  


Elias prided himself, of course, in his knowledge. He wasn’t a man easily surprised, and he wasn’t a man given to allow himself to be taken by surprise. So when he opened his office door to find the room packed floor-to-ceiling with helium balloons, the startled yelp he gave as several sprang out and drifted up past his face was, on a personal level, somewhat embarrassing.

Right. These routines again. He’d gotten comfortable with Gertrude’s blessed lack of assistants in her later years. He could call the cleaners to deal with this, of course, but then there’d be gossip…

With a sigh, Elias pushed his way into the room and began shoving armload after armload of helium balloons out into the corridor, where they’d be somebody else’s problem. This delay was going to make the pay confirmations late again. He made a mental note to process the archive team’s pay last.

\-------------

  
  


“Ah, Tim. Two of the last batch of tapes mention clowns or circuses in some capacity. Here.” Jon handed over a couple of tapes.

“Thanks, boss.”

“Why are you int – I mean, I would like to know why you’re suddenly so interested in this topic, Tim.”

“I’m sure you would.” He grinned. “It’s killing you, not knowing something, isn’t it?”

Jon rubbed his temples. “We’re on the same side, you know.”

“Mmm. Yeah. I with that were true, too. Anyway, that cop’s here to see you.”

“Hmm?” Jon spied the figure moving into view in the doorway. “Ah, constable – ”

“Not any more.”

“What?”

“I quit the force. That’s not why I’m here.” Basira shuffled around Tim, who left the office, tapes in hand.

“Oh. Then, uh, how can I help you? Besides the apology I owe you, I suppose, for last time we – ”

“Neither of us were having a great time that day,” Basira said, waving his words away. “I’m here to make a statement, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Apparently you’re the guy to talk to. Can’t say it’s encouraging, the idea that new statements go straight to archives, but what do I know?”

“I can’t say I entirely understand the organisational structure myself, yet. So. You saw something supernatural?”

Basira flinched. “Something… odd. We don’t tend to use the S-word on the force, you know? Makes you look unstable. But sometimes we deal with things that are a bit strange, or odd, or weird, and if you see something _weird_ -weird they give you a form to sign. Section 31, it’s called. Means that your witness testimony can’t be released as part of an FOI request, and a few other secrecy clauses. And we’re… it’s not an official part of the form, you understand, but it’s kind of accepted, internally, that you don’t talk about it. You don’t go telling civillians, and people who haven’t signed a section 31 before don’t ask, because nobody wants to sign one.”

“And that’s why you’re coming here to talk now. Because you’ve left the force.”

“Kind of? Other way around, really, I think.”

“Right. But why do people not want to sign a section 31? I would imagine that there are a lot of things police keep quiet about, so – ”

“Because once you sign one, you get more. Whenever an odd case shows up, they send the sectioned officers first, since they’re already, y’know… compromised, I guess? You sign one of those and suddenly every druggie hallucinating a building of spiders, every possible cult-related arson, every physically impossible switchblade murder rampage is your problem. That’s why it took us so long to get here for your worm thing; ll the sectioned officers were tied up, and anything that happens in this place is basically an automatic section 31. But it’s not technically illegal for me to talk to you about this. My old workmates are gonna be pissed if they ever find out, but… well, I just want someone to know about it. Because Altman deserves better.”

“Right. Well then.” Jon slipped a blank tape into his recorder and started recording. “Statement of Basira Hussain, regarding…?”

Basira leaned forward. “Regarding the kidnapping of Callum Brodie by Maxwell Rayner.”

\------------

  
  


“… He was killed by a goddamn cultist, and now they’re just covering it up. They sent us to hell and back, _again_ , and now they have the gall to just, just pretend it never happened. _Again_. Altman deserved better. And so do I. So I quit.” Basira stood up. “That’s uh, about it, I guess. I just… wanted to tell someone, for once.”

“Right.” Jon turned the recorder off. “Well, I hope the experience has been cathartic. Thank you for you statement, Miss Hussain.”

“Basira. Thanks for… listening, I guess. I didn’t intend to take up so much of your time with so much, well, detail, but…”

“This place does have that effect on people.”

“Right. Well, thanks.”

“Do you feel… better?” Jon asked, unable to keep the hope out of his voice. “For talking about it? Do you think it might have done some good?”

Basira heaved a sigh. “No. I was hoping I would, but… no.”

He’d been worried that might be the case. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well. Sometimes the world sucks, I guess. A kid was saved and a lot of evil people are dead before they can hurt anyone else, so… ‘bye, I suppose.”

And with that, she left.

Jon sat by himself, in the quiet, and thought.

The People’s Church weren’t hard to figure out. A cult that served the Dark, terrifying, hurting and killing people to feed it. Just like Jude’s people served the Desolation, terrifying, hurting and killing people to feed it. How did people get involved in something like that? He supposed he knew that already, with his little cult serving the Eye.

Jude had made herself out to be a sadistic sociopath from the beginning, and maybe she had been, but… Jon had read Jane’s statement, and at least a couple of outside accounts of Mike Crew, from before they’d been completely corrupted. They had definitely changed, and without, at least in Mike’s case, seeming to realise it had even happened. Jon hadn’t hurt or terrified anyone, not on purpose. And he hadn’t killed anyone, not yet. But what if Tim was right, and it was just a matter of time?

What if Jon didn’t notice until it was too late? And what if, when he did notice, he didn’t care any more?


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim violates the dress code. Elias violates basic human decency. I violate the reader's patience with a third update in one day.
> 
> This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**Contains graphic violence**

\--------------------------

Elias walked into the archives, caught sight of Tim, and sighed. “Tim, that outfit is not work-appropriate.”

“Sorry, boss,” Him said, straightening his tie patterned to look like a dead fish and peering up from under the brim of his giant hat shaped like a birthday cake. “Forgot we had a dress code.”

“This is the third time this week, Tim. We have an image to maintain.”

“Oh dear. I suppose you’ll have to fire me.”

“You know perfectly well that that isn’t an option.”

“How unfortunate.” He tapped the side of his hat; the tips of the candles lit up, and _Happy Birthday_ started to play.

“While we are on the topic of your… temperament… do you happen to know anything about the twenty seven Hawaiian pizzas delivered to my office yesterday morning?”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that, I’m afraid. I don’t like Hawaiian pizza. Maybe you could find out who paid for them to find the culprit?” he asked in the tone of one who knows very well that the pizzas were charged to the credit card of one Elias Bouchard.

“I’ll do that,” he said sourly, glancing at Sasha, who contrived to look innocent without taking her eyes off her computer screen. “Anyway. Mary. I was wondering if you could perhaps come and see me in my office in about, let’s say, ten minutes?”

“Sure.”

“Elias, have you seen Jon?” Sasha asked as he went to leave. “You didn’t send him off somewhere or something? He hasn’t been in yet.”

“I have not. Perhaps he’s stuck in traffic. Or he’s traipsed off to do something stupid. Either way, I’m sure he’ll be in later.” He went back to his office to prepare for his meeting with Mary.

When she arrived, he greeted her politely and waved her into a seat. “Now,” he said. “Mary. You’ve been with us for awhile now. How are you finding it, working here?”

“It’s a nice place to work,” she said. “My coworkers are very nice, and the work is interesting.”

“You’ve taken to it much better than I expected you would, I admit. You seem to have a talent for data entry. Very efficient.”

“Thank you.”

“I do have one little question for you, and it’s a rather important one. The matter is quite urgent, so I’d appreciate as honest and direct an answer as possible, please. Where, exactly, is my Archivist?”

The flicker of confusion that crossed Mary’s features looked genuine, but for a being such as her that, of course, meant nothing. “I don’t know.”

“Ah. See, that puts us both in an unfortunate position. Because I will get this out of you, Mary, and I’d prefer to do so in a manner that didn’t create any… bad blood between us. Are you sure you want to go with that answer?”

“I haven’t seen Jon since yesterday. Wherever he is, he hasn’t told me.”

Elias took a moment to dip into her mind. He was more careful than the first time he’d tried this with her, making sure to ‘shield his eyes’, so to speak, against the bright confusion. Getting anything from nonhuman minds was always a bit of a challenge; it was like opening a computer file in a program that didn’t support the format. You might get nothing at all, you might get a string of garbage, or you might get something that, with the right expertise, you could make semi-intelligible. And he’d had a while, now, to learn at least some of Mary’s ‘format’. Enough that he wasn’t picking up anything that immediately suggested that she did know where he was… but not enough for Elias to be sure. He was going to have to poke a bit to get anything useful.

“Well, let me tell you what I know. I know that at eight thirteen this morning, Jon opened the door to two delivery men who claimed that they were making a delivery. When he asked what they were delivering, one hilariously quipped, “You,” and mentioned a “Nikola” before the pair subdued him and forced him into the back of a van. A van that I wasn’t able to track, to a destination that I cannot see. Now, Mary, perhaps you have an alternate read on this situation, and if so I’d love for you to share it, but to me it looks very much like the circus has kidnapped my Archivist, and I’m sure you know exactly where they are. So if you’d be so good as to tell me, then I can deal with this situation and you can go back to that data entry that you’ve proven to be so skilled at, and we won’t need to have any… unpleasantness here. Okay?”

“I don’t know where the circus is,” Mary insisted. “I’ve been here. I haven’t been in contact with them.”

That had to be a lie, but Elias couldn’t find any evidence of such in her mind. Which meant that his ability to read it was woefully inadequate for this situation. He was going to have to rely on less refined tactics – he was going to have to convince or threaten her.

“It’s hardly a secret that the circus is integral to the Unknowing,” he said. “You honestly expect me to believe that any of you aren’t keeping a close eye on them?”

“We don’t have a weekly newsletter. They’ll call us when they call us. They haven’t called us, so I don’t know where they are.”

Another obvious lie, but he still wasn’t getting anything. He had no idea whether the bindings that tied the rest of the archive staff to the Institute actually worked on a being like her (he’d half-hoped she would try to quit, so he could find out whether she could), but he doubted it – even if her mask was ‘human’ enough for the purpose, she could easily discard it for another. Meaning he didn’t really have anything to threaten her with. Except, of course, for the obvious thing.

Which may or may not work. At least this would give him the opportunity to find out.

Elias tried to make sure he had something on hand to use against any archive employee, just in case he needed to. For most, it wasn’t hard – the average human lifetime is full of deep regrets, unfortunate circumstances and bad decisions that the human is largely unaware of, and it was trivial to draw up the relevant details and put together an unpleasant revelation. He had his pick of options. For Mary, though, pulling out anything coherent had taken a long, concerted effort, and in the end he only had one good, clear example to hit her with. Which could very well not phase her at all, even if he pulled it off.

But Elias rarely said no to an experiment. He did run an academic institute, after all.

“Perhaps I haven’t made my concern clear,” he said. “Jon is your friend, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Then I think it’s important for you to understand the sort or thing a human can experience at the hands of your kind. Let me show you an example.”

Elias bundled up the concept, and pushed it into the mind in front of him.

_Colin had been walking home when the… people… had taken him. They had simple surrounded him, thrown a bag over his head, and dragged him away._

_Now, he was here. In a wide, empty room. They hadn’t even tied him to a chair; they had simply laid him on the floor while one held his hands, another his feet. The others stood around him, looking so exceptionally normal in their perfectly generic outfits with their perfectly generic haircuts; not like kidnappers at all. Until you looked at their faces, and saw that none of their expressions were quite right._

_The room was brightly lit. there was no furniture, but there were lamps everywhere, their light directed on him. The people crouched over him like cats watching a wounded mouse._

_There was a knock at the door. One of the girls went to answer it. The others simply waited. Watching. When Colin tried to scream for help, one muffled the sound by pushing his hand into Colin’s mouth. Colin bit down, but he didn’t appear to notice._

_The girl returned, and only then did anyone speak._

“ _Who was it?”_

“ _The professor. But he left before telling me what he wanted.” She crouched over Colin, with the others._

“ _I still think the heart is right,” one of them complained. “The professor said it was right.”_

“ _It doesn’t feel right. The pressure is wrong.”_

“ _Everything about the body feels wrong.”_

“ _Well, let’s find out.” This one tore Colin’s shirt open with a swipe of one hand. And then did the same to his chest._

_Fingers moved through skin and flesh like butter, baring bone. Colin tried to scream, but his mouth was still full of fingers, and when he started to choke on his own drool, he found himself hoping it would kill him before the next part._

_But it didn’t. Fingers scraped flesh back from his chest while another hand cracked his sternum open and peeled back his ribcage. And then it was no longer necessary to gag Colin, because his lungs were exposed, and he could not breathe._

_Few things are as painful as questing hands venturing through tissues where no hand was ever meant to go. Lungs were pulled aside, adding new types of suffocation sensation to the already suffocating Colin; his heart, beating frantically, was cradled, as they nodded and pointed and discussed its beating in detail._

“ _What about the valves?” one asked. “I want to see the valves.”_

“ _If we open it up, they’ll stop working,” another pointed out. “We won’t see anything.”_

“ _I want to feel them, then,” he said, and fingers were pressed into the heart itself, sinking into the chambers._

“ _I want to see the liver while it’s still working,” another said. “I want to be ready for class.” And more hands tore at Colin’s belly._

_Colin, weakening rapidly, wished to die._

_And he got his wish._

Elias inspected Mary’s expression carefully. There wasn’t much to see; her face was completely blank, like she’d forgotten to emote. She was also, he noticed, forgetting to breathe. He skimmed her mind, but got absolutely nothing he could recognise. Just chaotic gibberish.

Hmm. Could have gone better.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” he suggested. “I’m sure that whatever filing you have to do today can wait.”

Mary didn’t answer. But she did stand up and walk out, so there was still _something_ there that understood him.

Elias watched her leave, then rubbed at his eyes. God, that was exhausting. Maybe he should take a half-day, too.

Nobody ever appreciated the sacrifices he made for this Institute.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally get a Mary PoV.
> 
> This chapter contains graphic depictions of self harm.

**Contains graphic depictions of self harm**

\---------------------------

Mary sat on her couch and stared at the black screen of her television, thinking.

She had felt pain before. She knew how the nerves worked. She was pretty sure most of hers were in the wrong place, but she’d used them, so she knew what it was like to feel pain.

She’d had no idea what it was like to be in pain.

She’d thought that she was getting the hang of imitating humans, learning how to speak, how to cook, having a favourite tea… but everything that Elias had shown her was so far outside her realm of experience or understanding that she was beginning to realise that she had no idea what a human really was.

And that bothered her.

The movies said that she should be feeling… guilt, right now. Over the man whose liver she had dissected with her fingernails while he bled out on the floor. She hadn’t yet figured out how to imitate guilt but she wished that she had. Her mask wasn’t anywhere near perfect. She had so, so far to go.

She wished that she could be that man, panicking as his life faded, consumed with pain and fear and hope and the ecstasy of death. Someone who lived their mask so completely that they lived or died with it. She’d never…

She was attached to Mary. Attached in ways that she would never admit to the others of her kind. She knew that, when it came time to discard the mask, she wouldn’t want to. She kept wanting to be Mary a bit longer, just a little longer, and when Mary was discarded, she was going to have to hide a sadness that would linger for longer than the mask did. There was something wrong with her, she knew, to make her feel that way. Something that she was so ashamed of that, when she was sent out into the world to Be A Person, she’d sought a job at the one place that none of her kind were likely to be.

She hadn’t truly understood that humans felt this way all the time, on a much deeper, more inviolable level than she was capable. She could never be as lost in a mask as they were, but she… enjoyed pretending that she could be, for a little while.

She wasn’t scared of being like that man, like her friends, like humans – she knew that would never happen. But she was a little scared of wanting to be. None of the others, she was sure, wanted to be this completely. None of the others would do what she knew she was about to do.

She took her shirt off and folded it neatly, putting it aside where she wouldn’t bleed on it. She stepped away from her lounge and  laid down on the easily cleaned hardwood floor.

Then she dug her fingers into her chest and trow it open.

She felt the pain firing through her nerves. She tried to remember Colin, tried to remember what it felt like to be _in pain_ , to be consumed by the sensation as it screamed into his mind that everything was so very wrong on every possible level. She could have willed the sternum to separate; instead, she broke through with her fingers, just as Fulan had done to Colin, remembering the man’s panic at the sharp crack.

She moved her lungs out of the way, cupped her heart, started to prod at it, remembered the fear of death and the hope of death all at once. Yes… yes, this was what it had felt like.

She could pretend, for a little while, that the experience was hers.

\----------------------

  
  


Mary hadn’t come back from her meeting with Elias. He’d sent an email explaining that he’d given her the rest of the day off and Jon still hadn’t turned up, so the other archival assistants had gone on without them.

Martin and Tim peered over Sasha’s shoulder as she added to the notes on the computer screen.

“So,” she said. “With these. It looks like we at least know what the big problem we’re supposedly facing is. We have, uh.” She stopped, apparently unwilling to say it out loud.

“We have to stop the evil clown apocalypse,” Martin finished for her, hoping it’d sound less ridiculous out loud than in his head. It didn’t.

“Fantastic,” Tim said, cracking his knuckles. “Can’t wait.” He exchanged a look with Sasha that Martin couldn’t read.

“Okay but, we… we don’t exactly have a game plan for it, do we?” Martin pointed out. “I mean, Gertrude says that if we want to delay things properly we need to break things up during the ritual and I, for one, don’t know any, well, magic.”

“Who needs magic? We just kill this dancer and as many of its creepy circus friends as we can.”

Sasha frowned. “I’m not sure we’re necessarily capable of fighting off an army of clowns,” she pointed out. “Martin and I faced one of these stranger monsters in a tunnel, both of us were armed, and we definitely did not win.”

“Also,” Martin said, “looking at the report with the Mechanical Turk, I don’t think things are going to be… coherent… inside the ritual. So we can’t really rely on anything that needs a lot of coordination. Or comprehension.”

“So we need a more sophisticated way of killing off the dancer and as many of its friends as we can,” Tim said. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out. Knowing when and where this is happening would help. Or having Monsterboss come into work – isn’t this his job?”

“Don’t call him that,” Martin snapped.

Tim rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’m off to lunch; I’ll see you guys mid-afternoon.”

“It’s ten thirty in the morning.”

“Your point?”

In the end, Martin decided to take an early lunch, too. He had some shopping to get done.

He was bound in service to an eldritch evil, trying to find a way to save the world from a different eldritch evil, but he also had to buy more eggs today. When had life gotten this weird?

He was browsing the random knicknacks in a shop near the supermarket when his eyes rested on the photo frames. Maybe he should get photos of everyone together, for the office. To remind everyone they were in it together.

There was something familiar about one of stock photos in one of the frames. An overexposed paper picture of two women smiling into the camera. He’d seen that photo…

He’d seen it in Mary’s lounge room, among a half dozen similarly generic pictures. Did she… did she not understand what photo frames were for? Oh, dear.

He was surprised, honestly, that she kept photos of people looking at the camera at all, given how she talked about her Watcher –

Wait.

_Wait._

\----------------------

  
  


_I’m gonna get put on a watch list for this_ , Tim thought to himself as he googled various ways to make explosives. He’d known some of this already from his old job in publishing, when he’d been editing acton titles, but the rules in action titles were… lenient. He sure as hell hadn’t needed to know the ideal air/powder mix to ignite flour. No; flour wasn’t going to work. They needed something they could easily get into… wherever things were going down.

He was going to need the help of a professional.

\---------------------

  
  


Wait.

Okay.

So, they’d never really pried into Mary’s past. What if her cult upbringing had been serving the Ceaseless Watcher? What if she hadn’t run away, but working for the Institute was what she’d been supposed to do her whole life?

It made sense, right? The Dark had a cult and the Desolation had a cult, and the Stranger had a goddamn circus, for some reason, so wy wouldn’t the Watcher have a cult? She certainly hadn’t seemed as surprised by the recent revelations as everyone else. She must have known.

Then why hadn’t she warned any of them?? She hadn’t met them until they were already trapped, but still. She could’ve said something. She had to have known about the fears, right? Had she known about the upcoming clown apocalypse? Had she – ?

It was obvious what was going on here. Martin had never studied cults in particular, but he wasn’t an idiot; he knew how basic social control worked. If you had a group of people you couldn’t predict very well, you could assert some control by including an agent who’d build up trust with them, serve as a calm example, give the right influences and suggestions to… smooth things over. It wasn’t rocket science.

Why they’d picked someone so naive and socially incompetent was a mystery, unless that was also an act. It had worked, after all.

The real question was… what was he supposed to do about it? He couldn’t very well tell everyone. Tim was barely holding it together, Jon was distant, and who knew how Sasha was taking everything. Martin hated being manipulated, but for the others… maybe Mary’s presence was necessary. The whole situation was awful, but if they started breaking down, it would be worse.

They at least had to hold it together long enough to save the world.

So he was supposed to… what? Keep quiet? Just pretend nothing was going on? Or was that more dangerous, given that they weren’t really sure what anyone’s plans for them was, beyond the apocalypse thing?

He should talk to Mary. If he was right about her, then being straightforward was best. He could find out what her overall purpose actually was and… feel better about the whole thing, probably.

Elias had given her the day off, so she was probably at home. Martin went over and was about to knock on the front door when, through the gap in the curtains on the lounge window, he glimpsed something utterly incomprehensible.

Mary was lying on the floor, face blank and eyes wide, the skin of her chest torn open. For an awful moment, Martin thought she’d been horribly murdered, but within moments a far worse truth revealed itself as she curled her fingers around her exposed sternum and just… snapped it.

Martin wanted to close his eyes, he wanted to run, he wanted to scream, but horror had paralysed him, and he couldn’t look away as his colleague levered her own ribcage open, moved her lungs aside, and grasped at her own heart. After a moment, she plunged her fingers into the heart muscle itself, spraying blood in a wide arc across the room. She stayed there for… a second? A minute? And hour? … before withdrawing her fingers and calmly… putting her heart back.

Lungs were laid carefully over the top, the ribcage was closed. As Martin watched, skin and muscle knit itself back together, and Mary sat up. The only blood left in the room was that on her hands, which she carefully licked clean.

Martin was thankful when his knees gave out and he sank to the ground, because he was finally unable to see into the lounge room any more. He crawled under the window, sat back and just… tried to breathe.

What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck??!


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Martin continues to have a bad day.

Okay. Okay.

Okay, so.

Okay.

What the fuck had Martin just witnessed?

Could be a hallucination. Had to be a hallucination, another something targeting him, trying to drive him made. Or something had attacked Mary, possessed her in some way… they had a lot of statements like that. He should make sure she was okay.

But no. He remembered Mary’s strange mannerisms when she’d first arrived in the archives, her cluelessness. He remembered how bare her house had been, as if it was entirely for appearance’s sake. He remembered her watching him sleep.

Mary had never been right.

His colleague was some kind of eldritch monster.

He had to warn the others. He pulled out his phone, started looking for Sasha’s number with trembling hands –

“Martin?”

Martin looked up. Mary stood in the doorway, not looking particularly worried or confused by the fact that Martin was crouched under her window having a panic attack.

“H – hi, Mary!” Martin practically screeched. “Didn’t see you there! I came to, uh… see you? Um, because, uh…”

“Did you come to see if I was okay? Because we’re friends?”

“Yes! Yes; Elias said he gave you the day off and I thought something might be wrong so I, um… yes. I came to make sure you were okay.”

Mary smiled brightly. “I’m fine, Martin. Thank you for checking. I’ll make you some tea.”

“Actually I, uh… I have to go? I have… some… filing to do.”

“When friends visit you give them tea,” Mary said firmly, taking his wrist and helping him up. Her grip was gentle, but Martin had no doubts about his chances if he tried to break free.

This was it, then. He’d discovered her secret, and she was going to kill him.

Unless she genuinely did just want to make him tea? Perhaps she hadn’t realised what he knew? Perhaps she thought he was just here to check up on her and share tea? Maybe. Maybe he’d live. After all, he’d spent a whole month in her house and she hadn’t hurt him. She’d just… toyed with him, he supposed. Like Jane. Maybe if he kept going along with her little pantomime, she’d let him go.

After all, she couldn’t be here for him. She must be here for something in the archives.

So he let himself be led inside. He sat at the table. And he waited while the kettle boiled.

“Would you like blackberry and mint?” Mary asked brightly.

“Uh… yes. Please.” She wouldn’t poison him, would she? No. He’d just watched her rip her own chest open and then heal it up with no problems. If she was going to kill him, she wouldn’t need to use poison.

“So, you’re, um… you’re feeling okay, then, Mary?” he tried.

“I’m feeling fine, Martin. How are you?”

“I’m… I’m good.”

“You don’t sound good,” she said doubtfully.

“Oh, don’t I? Haha, just the… stress of work and everything, I suppose.”

“Have you been sleeping and drinking water?”

“Y-yes.”

“And eating a variety of vegetables? Proper nutrition is good for managing stress.”

“I’m more an um, ready meal and donut kind of guy, actually.” Martin swallowed around the lump in his throat. “But I’ll, um, take that on board. I guess.”

Mary set a cup in front of him that, a couple of months ago, had been his. He took a cautious sip. Mary took a draught from her own cup, ignoring the boiling temperature, without taking her eyes off him. “You’re worried about something,” she said, in the tone of someone who’d just solved a complex puzzle. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“N-no. No, I’m okay.”

“Talking to friends helps people feel better about problems.”

“Not all problems, I assure you!” _Or all friends, for that matter_.

“Ah.” Mary nodded. “It’s a secret.”

“I guess it kind of is, yeah!”

Mary nodded, like he’d said something important, and Martin realised something.

The thing in front of him might be dangerous, and strong, and capable of healing just about anything, and apparently immune to pain. But she had been trying to behave like a human.

 _And Martin was a lot better at that than she was_.

“How are you handling the stress, Mary?” he asked. “You’ve only been here a few months, all this must be a lot to handle.”

Mary shrugged. “A lot has been going on, and I’ve been trying to learn very fast,” she admitted. “I was very worried when you went missing earlier, and now Jon… it’s hard to keep track of so many friends.”

“Wait, what about Jon?”

“Elias said he doesn’t know where he is. He asked me, but I know less than he does. He didn’t tell you?”

“No, he – ” there were a lot of implications to that, but they were going to have to wait. If Jon was missing, Martin didn’t have any way of helping. He forced himself to stop thinking about it before he would start to freak out, and focused on the situation at hand. He was taking tea with a monster. “Elias never tells us anything. That’s not important right now.” Well, it was, but… “You’ve been worried, and trying to learn. What are you trying to learn about? We’re friends, so I want to help.”

“I’m trying to learn how this feels,” Mary said, suddenly reaching across the table and digging her fingers into his arm.

“Let me go!” Martin immediately screeched, and she did, looking worried. Martin inspected his arm, but there was no blood. She’d only nicked the skin a little, before he could stop her.

 _Monster, Martin. Don’t get cocky_.

Trying to ignore the thundering of his own heart in his ears, Martin kept his voice as level as he could while he said, “Friends don’t hurt friends, Mary! Not on purpose.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t hurt me,” he snapped with a sternness he didn’t feel, and was surprised when she did, indeed, nod meekly.

“Don’t touch me, either,” he added, “without my permission. You’re very scary sometimes, Mary.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

Holy hell. Was she genuinely listening, or just toying with him more, waiting to catch him by surprise later? Her motivations didn’t matter, he supposed, if the end result was the same. (Until she decided to stop toying and catch him by surprise – then they would matte very much. He had to be careful.)

He pressed this mysterious advantage while he seemed to have it. “What are you?” he asked.

“I’m Mary Sue.”

“And what’s Mary Sue?”

“Mary Sue is an archival assistant at the Magnus Institute.”

Not what he wanted to know. “You’re not human, are you?”

“No.”

“… Really? You’re just admitting it, just like that?”

Mary looked worried. “Was I supposed to keep that a secret?”

“How would I – ? If you’re not human, what are you? I don’t mean your… your disguise, or whatever this is, I mean physically, what kind of a thing are you?”

“I don’t know if you have a word for me.”

“But you’re a, a monster of some kind.”

“Is it my turn now?”

“What?”

“To ask a question. In small talk, people trade questions and information. But the ratio varies. I don’t know when my turn is.”

Martin hesitated. “You want to ask me something?”

“Yes.”

“… Alright. What do you want to know?”

“How do the hands work?”

This was not what Martin had been expecting. “… What?”

“The hands. I can get them looking right from the outside, but they don’t move right. I can’t figure out how the bones and muscles and tendons all line up inside. How to they work?” Her eyes didn’t leave Martin’s hands while she spoke. He unconsciously clenched them into fists, which just seemed to interest her more.

“You want to… inspect my hands.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll answer my questions?”

“Unless I have a good reason not to.”

Reluctantly, Martin reached his right hand across the table. Then stopped and pulled it back, remembering Mary plunging her fingers into her own chest. “You can’t… cut it open, or break anything, okay? Just the outside. No damage.”

“But then how will I see how it works?”

“Friends don’t hurt friends. Outside or nothing.”

“… Okay. Fine.”

He gave her his hand. She wasn’t gentle, as she felt around the bones and twisted his fingers this way and that, but she always stopped short of causing any real pain. Martin tried not to think about what she could do to his hand, if she were so inclined.

“You’re some kind of monster.”

“I think so? I mean, people mean different things when they say ‘monster’. Tim calls Jon a monster, but I am not like Jon.”

“You were never human.”

“No. I am a different thing. There’s a statement about me.”

That was useful! “Which one?”

“0161207.”

Martin fished a pen out of his pocket and awkwardly scrawled the number on his arm with his off hand. Mary yanked one of his fingers back.

“Careful! You’ll… bruise the muscle, or whatever.”

“There are no muscles in the fingers.”

“What?”

“There are no muscles in the fingers. Only tendons, pulled by muscles in the hand and arm.”

“Well, be careful anyway. Are you here to kill anyone?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“I don’t know if people are going to die in the Unknowing.”

So she was part of the Stranger. That… made sense. “Won’t… won’t we die in the Unknowing? Won’t you be killing, or at least really hurting, your friends?”

“I won’t be Mary for the Unknowing,” she pointed out, as if he was being stupid.

“… Right. How, um… how long are you going to be Mary?”

“I don’t know. Do you think I should stop?”

“No! No, you should… you should definitely not stop.”

“Do you want to stop being Martin?” She looked carefully at his face, like his answer was something important and profound.

“No! No, I’ll… I’ll keep being Martin, thanks.” He yanked his hand back, and was a little surprised when she didn’t stop him. “I actually have some shopping to do, a lot of things I need to buy for Martin, so I’m just going to go now, I think.”

“You haven’t finished your tea,” she accused.

Martin gulped down the still-too-hot tea in two swallows. “It was delicious, thank you,” he gasped, and ran for the door.

“Goodbye, Martin!”

Oh, god.

Oh, god.

She didn’t follow him. Martin kept running for as long as he could, which admittedly wasn’t very long; he ran until he started crying from exhaustion and terror and relief all at once, then pressed himself into the corner of a bus shelter and pulled his hood over his head as if that would somehow stop her from recognising him if she _did_ follow.

He needed to warn the others. And they needed to do… something… about her, before she got bored with being Mary.

He just had no idea what.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone realises how fucked they all are.

Sasha heard Tim’s hat singing _Happy Birthday_ returning from lunch before she saw him. She glanced up from her screen just in time to see him swan around the corner, two champagne glasses in one hand and an open bottle in the other.

“Heya, Sasha. Champagne?”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Oh nooo, how unprofessional. Hope I don’t get fired.” He sloppily filled both glasses, then downed them one after the other.

“Are you drunk?”

“Not yet! Give me about twenty minutes!”

“Yeah, you might want to hold onto your sobriety for a bit. I’ve been look at some of – ”

“Guys!” Martin burst into the room, pale faced and panting. “Guys, I’ve got bad news and worse news, although I’m not sure which piece of news is the worse piece so I’m afraid I can’t offer your the option of order – ”

“I’ve got bad news, too,” Sasha said sourly. “Sounds like there’s plenty to go around.”

“Great!” Tim Sat on his desk. “You guys can take turns. Bad news table tennis. Sounds like Martin has two pieces, so he gets to serve. Pick one.”

“Uh… Jon’s missing. Like, properly missing. Elias doesn’t know where he is; he asked Mary and she doesn’t know and I’m really worried he might be kidnapped or killed or – ”

“Why would he ask Mary and not us?” Sasha frowned.

“Well, that kind of tails into my second piece of news, so…”

“So it has to wait!” Tim declared in his best referee voice. “Sasha for the return strike!”

“Um. Right. Well. We’ve been focusing mostly on Stranger stuff for, well, obvious reasons, but I’ve been branching out into some of our other files and tapes and, um. I don’t think the Unknowing is our only problem here.” She grimaced. “In 2007, apparently Gertrude stopped an apocalypse related to the Flesh, and there’s a 2009 statement here that… well, I’m not absolutely certain it’s an attempted Buried apocalypse, but…”

“They all have one, don’t they.” Tim put his head in his hands. “Of course they do. Why would anything not be the most complicated and dangerous thing it could be?”

“I… I think they might,” Sasha agreed. “I mean, I’m not sure. And it looks like at least one or two were already dealt with by Gertrude, so… that’s something.”

“Do we have one?” Tim asked.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to end the world!” Martin snapped.

“You know what I mean. Does _it_ have one.” He waved one hand vaguely, to indicate the general aura of dread throughout the building.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure about any of this.” Sasha bit her lip. “But if we did, we wouldn’t exactly hear about it, would we?”

“Can you stop saying ‘we’ like we’re involved in this somehow?” Martin cut in. “I’m only interested in _saving_ the world, thank you very much.”

“Why wouldn’t we hear about it?” Tim asked. “You don’t think Gertrude would record anything about that?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think Elias would give us the tapes about it. Or any files about it in this archive. Although maybe that’s why Gertrude kept it such a mess – so Elias wouldn’t be able to find anything.”

“Well, she did a great job at that. None of us can find anything. Truly a professional. Martin, you had more bad news?”

“Um, yeah.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Mary’s a monster. Like, a full-on… like Michael, or that thing from the table. A piece-of-the-Stranger kind of monster.” He frowned. “That’s how it works, right? I still don’t completely understand how the fears – ”

“She’s _what_?” Sasha demanded. “What happened? Are you okay? Is she coming here?”

“Martin, why the hell would you not lead with that?!” Tim leapt up off his desk, reached behind Martin’s, and grabbed Martin’s axe. “The Stranger, of course. Are you sure it’s the Stranger?”

“Well, I didn’t ask about the Stranger specifically, honestly it all looked kind of fleshy? But she seems pretty invested in the Unknowing, and her general behaviour – ”

“Wait, you talked to her about this?” Sasha paled. “She knows you know?”

“Well, I didn’t intend to, but she kind of… dragged me into her house? No, it – ” Martin waved his hands desperately for peace as Sasha, too, raised her axe. “She let me go. I mean, I ran away and I’m pretty sure she didn’t chase me.”

“Oh. Well. _That sounds entirely safe, then_. Hang on… Elias asked her where Jon is. So he knows what she is?”

“I guess so?”

“Does that mean her people, or whatever, have Jon?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“Oh, I bet he knows,” Tim said sourly. “‘The worms weren’t enough, guys, why don’t you all work with a _literal monster’_.”

“Do you think she’ll come back here?” Martin fretted. “Even though she’s been found out?”

“Don’t see why she wouldn’t, if Elias already knew,” Sasha said.

“We’re all in agreement that Elias is probably a spooky-magic-whatever like Jon, right?” Tim added. “Why wouldn’t he hire monsters? He clearly wants Jon to ‘grow in power’, although he’s pretty bad at keeping him alive if he’s let him get kidnapped. Anyway, she has to come back here. You can’t leave. I tried.”

“Does that apply to her, though?” Sasha asked. “I mean, if she’s not human, are the… rules the same? Can Elias bind her here?”

Sasha and Martin both looked to Tim for answers.

“I don’t know!” he snapped. “Just because I’ve read Smirke’s weird fear essays doesn’t make me an occultist! Ask Elias!”

“Either way, we have to do something about her,” Martin said. “She wasn’t here earlier, so she doesn’t necessarily know that we’re planning to stop the Unknowing, but it’s not like we can hide it from her. And she’s got to be here for a reason; to… to stop us, or to… get something… We have to stop her, and we have to find Jon.”

“Do you think she does know where Jon is?” Sasha asked.

“I don’t know. Ha, if we _had_ Jon, he could ask her and find out, assuming his power works on monsters.”

“She’s tried to kill us before, I think,” Sasha said. “Mary, I mean.”

“When? I stayed in her house for a month and she didn’t touch me.”

Sasha bit her lip. “You know when we went to destroy that table, to save Jon? I tried to record the statements I’d based that logic on earlier today. They record to laptop.”

“They’re fake?”

“Yeah. And I got them from Mary.”

“So she’s a Stranger monster, probably a spy, she’s trying to end the world, and she tried to kill Sasha,” Tim counted off his fingers. “Also she may or may not have kidnapped or killed Jon. And she’ll probably come into work Monday morning, even if she’s not on her way to kill us all now.”

“I think Elias would stop – ”

“Oh really, Martin? How close was Elias to not being able to stop Jane Prentiss? Did he stop the thing that trapped you two, or the thing that nearly killed you in artefact storage?”

Sasha saw Martin shudder and pale with the memory. Then his face lit up. “Artefact storage!”

“What?”

“That thing in there. It was trapped in the table, right? Well, is there anything in there we can use to trap Mary?”

The boys both looked to Sasha.

“I don’t know. Just because I worked in artefact storage doesn’t mean I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the items. Or any knowledge on what most of them do.”

“Well, that’s something we should look into, then,” Tim said, overcome with a focus that Sasha hadn’t seen in him for months. “We probably have until Monday morning to find something to trap the monster.”

“And we have to find Jon!” Martin added. “He could be in trouble.”

“You boys handle the monster, I’ll go home and try to find Jon,” Sasha said.

“Go home? What are you going to do?”

“If I told you, you’d be an accessory.”

\----------------------

  
  


What Sasha was actually planning to do was find Jon’s mobile phone. If it was on his person. And if it was switched on.

“‘Don’t go through my computer, Sasha, it’s an invasion of privacy,’” she muttered under her breath in a mocking tone. “‘It’s creepy when you know all this stuff, Sasha’. Bet you’re happy I know how to get into your phone _now_ , huh. Let’s see you complain about _that_ ever again.”

The first thing she checked for was whether Jon had the tracking program that many of the staff had adopted during the Google Eye Crisis. Most of the adoptees had never bothered to uninstall the program. Jon, unfortunately, didn’t have it, which didn’t surprise Sasha in the least. Which meant an exact location was impossible to determine, or at least, beyond Sasha’s abilities without some very specialised and illegal software she didn’t have. But she did have the specialised and illegal software to get an _approximate_ location.

Sasha knew who Jon’s phone provider was, and she also knew that they had a pretty serious security flaw in their system – they never properly wiped the access credentials of old employees, just scrambled their passwords. Sasha’s friend Carla had stopped working for them over five years ago and was still, technically, in the system, although she of course had no way of logging in and doing anything. Not without having cracked the new password. And not without having access to the system software, which wasn’t something someone could just take and install on their home computer.

Sasha booted up her home computer, opened the software, and logged into Carla’s never-removed account. Their “scrambled” passwords were pulled from a list of two hundred defaults, which was about the stupidest way to do things that Sasha could think of (why not just randomise??), but it had made it easy to crack. And now, she could track where the data was going. 

She sent Jon a text: “Are you coming in to work today?”

Phones send tracking data all the time. Had Sasha had full access to the system, and known how to use it, she wouldn’t have needed to send anything at all. But she did have access to…

There. The signal that told the network the text had been received. Sent, as they were, to the nearest cell tower. Telling Sasha where the nearest tower was. Telling her what part of London Jon, or at least Jon’s phone, was in.

It was a start.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Institute's occ. health and safety protocols are terrible.

“So what, exactly, are you guys looking for?” Hannah asked as she lead Martin and Tim through artefact storage. 

Martin and Tim exchanged a look.

“Um… anything spider-related would probably be a start?” Martin suggested. “We need to… well. It’s complicated.”

“Spider-related?” Tim murmured.

“Well, the one example we have of this working is the table, so…”

Hannah frowned at both of them, but seemed to decide she didn’t want to know.  Martin vaguely knew Hannah from the occasional conversation in the breakroom about movies, but they weren’t close. Now she was going to think he was weird.

“Well, we’ve got aisles of spidery stuff,” she said, leading them down one such aisle. “Plus a few Leitners, of course, but they’re in separate storage.”

“You have separate storage just for Leitners?” Martin asked.

“Of course. They’re damn near impossible to contain. Seal them in a lead box and when you go back for them there’s a good chance half of them have somehow up and vanished. They’re more stable stored in some places than others, except when suddenly they’re not. Either way, it’s impractical and dangerous to store them here.” She stopped and waved a hand vaguely down the aisle. “Everything here is related to a statement involving some kind of horrible spider death. And further back here is some stuff with spider motifs that the researchers think are significant, but there’s plenty of other spider motif stuff everywhere where the spider motif wasn’t thought significant, so if the researchers are wrong about that then what you’re looking for could be anywhere in any of the containment rooms. Isn’t storage fun.”

“We get similar problems archiving the statements, believe me,” Tim said, scanning the room. “I see you’ve got a lot of hazard tape up.”

“we recently had a break-in. We assume it was the google eye prankster starting up again, but if it was then they got more than they bargained for. Collapsed that whole shelf over there, woke some kind of horror that turned a table to matchwood… honestly I expect their body to turn up somewhere in here. That tape is to warn you of the invisible caltrops.”

“Invisible caltrops?”

“We swept them up but we’re still missing five. You can go in there but, y’know, watch your step.”

Martin wasn’t listening. His eye had been caught by a cardboard box full of old film reels. The film labels had no names or descriptions; just complex drawings of cobwebs, done in crude permanent marker. “What are those?”

“Oh, I thought you’d like those.” Hannah grinned. “Those are Neil Lagorio’s original cuts.”

“Neil Lagorio? As in, the special effects artist? He was some kind of… occultist?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Tragic loss to film history to let them sit in here, if you ask me. They’re here because they came in with some kind of spooky statement about his death, but I was on the testing team for viewing them and I wasn’t eaten by anything. They are very good, though; I think he was experimenting with… with something to do with psychology or subliminal messaging, I guess? Some new way to add some creeping horror to a story, like how they use the right kind of music and soforth. There’s something really creepy about them, and I had nightmares for weeks afterward. Really good stuff. I’d pull out the projector and show you but, you know, occ. health and safety and all that. Look, how about I just…” she reached into her folder and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. “Here’s our manifest for this room. The higher security rooms have a few more hoops to jump through, if what you need isn’t here. I have to get going, but page me if you need help, alright?”

“You don’t need to watch us in here?” Tim asked.

“Nope. I can get you a babysitter if you want one, but archival staff have security clearance for artefact storage.”

“We do?” Martin frowned. “That’s weird.”

“Yes, how mysterious,” Tim said drily.

“Just obey the warning labels and don’t touch anything that shouldn’t be touched. The janitors hate having to clean blood out of things. And don’t forget to sign out when you leave.”

“Right. Thanks, Hannah.”

She gave a little wave and left.

“So,” Tim said, looking around the room. “Where to start?”

“Honestly, I want to pull out a projector and watch – but, uh, we do have a mission,” Martin quickly cut himself off at the look on Tim’s face. “Even if we don’t know… what to use or, or how. I mean, I wouldn’t have known how to bind that other thing to the table, would you?”

“I’m thinking we should look for something a bit more straightforward,” Tim said. “Maybe some kind of box, or magic handcuffs or something. If there’s something here that can actually kill her, that’d be perfect.”

“Should I be worried that your mind is going straight to murder?”

Tim scowled. “We’re going to have to kill as many of these things as we can to save the world. I think a chance to find out what does or doesn’t work on this one can only help.” He stalked off down the aisle.

Martin jogged to keep up. “Do you think this is a good idea? Trying to trap or, or to… get rid of her?”

“It was _your idea_ to trap her in something, Martin.”

“Yeah but, but I’ve been thinking. She hasn’t hurt us, has she?”

“She tried to kill Sasha by tricking her with that table, didn’t she? And that nearly killed you. And then both of you got stuck in – wherever you were.”

“But that might have been a mistake? I mean, I lived with her for a month and I’m fine.”

“She was _toying_ with you, Martin. Just like Prentiss. You know she was.”

“Yeah, I know that. I know. I just… I think it might be a bit more complicated than that? I mean, she’s… trying to be our friend. Or at least trying to pretend to be our friend. Like, she’s making the effort, and if we betray her like this and fail, she’s going to get way more dangerous. She’s not dangerous right now, so if we just – ”

“For now, Martin, yes. That’s what they do. They play around and string you along and then someday she’s going to decide that enough is enough and it’s time to peel your skin off, and we have to deal with the problem before that happens.”

“I don’t think she’d peel anyone’s skin off – ”

“That’s what they do, Martin! That’s what these things are like! And if you play their game, you’re going to die in some horrible way.”

“You think we’re all going to die in a horrible way anyway.”

“I do. But I have too much pride to go out at the hands of a fucking Stranger. I’d rather have died to Prentiss’ worms. Or Elias can kill me himself, with… whatever nonsense he can do, which I’m sure we’ll learn at the worst possible time.”

“He might genuinely just be a normal manager who happens to work in an evil fear temple,” Martin shrugged.

“Ha. No way. We’re not nearly that lucky.”

T hey walked in silence for a little bit, trying to figure out how  to use the various artefacts around them to trap somebody, until Martin piped up, “What about Jon?”

“What about him?”

“I get what you mean about Mary. But you always talk like that about Jon, too, and he’s, well, Jon. You don’t really think he’s going to go off the deep end and hurt someone, do you?”

“You’ve read the statements, Martin.”

“Yeah. But only the people who do go really bad are going to end up in the statements, aren’t they? Like, like those people who throw people off building or infect nursing homes with plagues or whatever… there might be a hundred others out there doing nothing, or doing good, even, and we’d never hear about them. All Jon can do is ask people questions. That’s… I mean, there are unethical ways to use that, but it’s not inherently dangerous. Do you really think he’s going to go… bad?”

Tim sighed. “I don’t know, Martin. I don’t know any more about any of this than you do. I’m just sick of being blindsided by random horrible bullshit.  So yeah, when the creepy paranoid boss who’s been making my life terrible shows up with evil magic, I tend to not be as optimistic about the future as you. Better cautious than dead, for as long as that can last, anyway.”

“Unless it makes us dead,” Martin retorted. “How can we make the world better if we don’t even try?”

“Try how? All of this stuff is about fear and terror and evil, Martin. There’s no good to be done with it, because the power only comes from making things worse. Anything else is like… violating metaphysical thermodynamics, or something, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, says Smirke,” Martin said stubbornly. “But even he tried to do good, to balance them and limit their power.”

“And he failed! Balance is obviously impossible. Just look around!”

“So he was wrong. Meaning he could be wrong about other things.”

Tim rubbed his temples. “Martin – ”

“I’m just saying, the one thing we know here is that we have no idea what’s going on. We were wrong about Mary for ages; we were clueless about the archives being mystical at all for the longest time. And now we’re just going to be like, ‘oh, we’ve been beaten over the head with enough basic information to put together a picture, so let’s grab our first assumptions and assume they’re right’? Working here, seeing the bad side of everything, that doesn’t mean that that’s all there is. And even if it is, that doesn’t… make it all bad, I mean… I mean, it’s like chemotherapy, right? Chemotherapy involves taking poison, making yourself really sick. But you do it to kill cancer – the poison can save lives. I mean, technically, working here makes us evil too, right? Feeding the, the Beholding, or whatever. But we’re using that power to _save the world_. Which _proves_ that good can come of it.”

“Yeah, if we pull it off,” Tim said. “If all the other awful stuff I bet we have to do to do it actually pays off, and we just don’t make everything worse, then fail.”

“You don’t think we can do it?”

“I don’t know. And neither do you, because we don’t know exactly what’s happening, or where, or when, and we don’t have a plan. But I’m not going to let myself get killed by optimism before we have a chance to take down as much of that circus as possible.”

_Well_ , Martin thought,  _at least he has… some kind of motivation. I just really, really hope he’s wrong._


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Martin hasn't yet met his trauma quota for the day, apparently.

The pair didn’t make much progress in finding something to bind Mary. Given that neither of them had any clue what they were looking for, or how to bind a monster, or much about what Mary was, they weren’t surprised.

“We’re not getting anything done here,” Tim eventually said, defeated. “I’m going to check the statements for strategy ideas.”

“I’ll be right with you,” Martin said. “I just want to peek at those film canisters.”

“Since when have you been a film nerd?”

“I’m not a – ” Martin’s cheeks flushed. “Neil Lagorio is a revolutionary figure in the special effects industry and his techniques influenced the whole direction of the horror genre! Even today, movies – ”

Tim put up a hand. “Okay, okay. See you later.”

Martin didn’t try to find a projector or anything. He was mostly interested in what movies were in the box. If they had  Dead Sky or The Nightmare Children, maybe he could talk to Hannah about checking them out for viewing… 

He quickly found that the entire box of canisters was unlabelled. The labels all just had those spiderweb designs drawn on them. Part of his mind was thinking  _this is deeply suspicious, that is a massive red flag_ , but the rest of him wasn’t really listening as he opened one of the canisters to inspect the film itself.  Using the little penlight on his keychain, he illuminated one of the frames to see if he could recognise it.

The image was of a spider, lurking in a massive web, and Martin felt a thrill of excitement. This hadn’t been in any Lagorio movie he’d seen, which might not mean anything – he didn’t seek out Lagorio movies in particular, or anything, he only watched horror casually – but it might. He thought he should’ve known if there was one about spiders, which meant that  _this might be a lost Lagorio movie_ , mouldering away in artefact storage. 

Or it might be some random early scene from a movie about something else. He unspooled some more film in a manner that would make any professional want to murder him for the damage it could potentially do, and checked more frames.

Hannah had been right; there was something about the images that… well. It pulled on something deep in the psyche, something that made the viewer want to see more even as they felt uneasy. Tape began to spool loosely around Martin’s feet as he sought more images of the spider,  trying to get a more complete picture.

He saw the problem that the previous watchers had had. They’d watched the film on a projector; a series of still images flashing by to create the illusion of movement. You could get something out of the frames that way, between the artificiality of motion, but you lost the truth of the frame – that it was still. That the thing was trapped there in the box, never to be freed by time, available for perusal at the viewer’s leisure. The movement of the film was the effect. It was artificial, a recreation of the movement o f  the figures that created it; an introduction of extra, unnecessary noise. 

Martin examines the stills, one by one, searching for the important ones. Heedlessly unwound film tangled around his ankles, but he didn’t pause to untangle it; he was too busy searching. Eventually most of the canister was loose, wound around his legs and arms and even looped around his neck couple of times, tangled as long strings tend to get when not properly wound up. He noticed that his fingertips, holding the film and the light, were purple; the tape on his wrists had tightened with all the movement. He tried to tug it free, but it was going to have to wait. It would take too much time and effort, and he had more frames to inspect.

He’d almost, almost found everything important, he was sure. But there was always one more piece to find, one more thread to follow.  He couldn’t find the last few pieces of the puzzle because he could no longer move; he was too entangled in the film, wounds around his limbs and body like heavy chains, like wayward rope, like cobwebs ensnaring an unwary fly all wrapped up and waiting for the spider to return.

And that was how Tim found him.

\-----------------------

  
  


“Hey Martin, it’s getting late. Do you want – oh, shit!”

Martin was sitting on the floor of the artefact storage vault, almost completely encased in shiny black film. Very little but his head and fingertips were clear, and he was staring blankly at a frame held between motionless purple fingers.

Tim dashed forward. “Martin? Martin, speak to me!”

No response. Tim whipped off his absurd birthday cake had ant dropped it on Martin’s head instead, pulling it down over his eyes to blindfold him.

Martin, predictably, panicked.

“Calm down, it’s just me! Calm down! Stop moving about until I get you out of this!” Tim glanced around for something sharp to cut the tape, but touching anything sharp in artefact storage was probably a really bad idea. He didn’t want to leave Martin alone long enough to go get scissors, and carrying a man bound entirely in film through the institute back to the archives was probably going to raise a lot of questions, so he just used his hands and teeth to break the film apart, freeing Martin layer by layer.

When he could move enough, Martin knocked the hat off and started to help. It was obvious, from the way his mottled hands moved slowly and clumsily over the tape, that they were numb, and after a few minutes of work Tim heard him gasp sharply as the pins and needles took hold. Once Martin was free enough, Tim pulled his shoes off to check the circulation in his feet. They were just as bad.

“What the hell happened?” Tim asked. “I thought that film was safe! The artefact storage woman said they were safe!”

“I guess she thought they were,” Martin mumbled. “I think I’m okay, though. I just got a bit carried away.”

“Carried away?! I think it would’ve eventually strangled you.”

“Yeah, well, it… it didn’t.” Martin squeezed his eyes shut and took a few deep, ragged breaths. “Thanks for the rescue.”

“You should go to hospital.”

“And say what? ‘Excuse me, do you guys have a ward for people who were nearly killed by weird spider films?’ I should be fine, I think, when I can feel my hands and feet properly again. I’m just… really tired.”

“Go home, then.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.” 

W hile Martin rubbed feeling back into his extremities, Tim cleaned up the film. Well, he shoved it all into the bottom of the cardboard box and stacked other reels on top of it, so it looked undisturbed. Anything more than that could be artefact storage’s problem, the next time someone went through the box.

Martin needed to recover. Sasha was off looking for Monsterboss. On Monday, a monster would waltz into the archives once more, and Tim still had no real method of stopping it. Not unless he got creative.

What was it Martin had said about the supernatural? It could be used like chemotherapy.  Take poison to kill a cancer. Tim didn’t like the idea, but he was running low on options. He might have to take a gamble.

He’d failed Danny. He wasn’t going to fail a second time.

\--------------------

  
  


Martin went straight home. He emptied his pockets, tossing everything in them in the general direction of his bedside table, and then simply collapsed onto his bed without bothering to get undressed. He was unconscious within seconds.

\---------------------

  
  


Sasha had texted Martin and Tim with Jon’s general area as soon as she’d determined it, but she knew she could do better. Well… she couldn’t. But someone could.

She found Hermann in a little coffee shop on the edge of town, sitting alone and sipping a chocolate milkshake. Even from behind, she could see that the portly man still had his trademark chaotic white beard, spreading out from his face like a cloud made of toilet brush bristles. From half a block away, she pulled out her laptop and scanned the open wifi networks to confirm what she already knew, then nodded to herself, put it away, and approached.

“Hermann,” she said with a grin, sliding into the chair opposite him and grabbing his milkshake. “Long time, no see.”

Hermann didn’t look remotely surprised at her presence. He didn’t look up  from his laptop at all. “So you’re still alive, Baby Star. That’s good to know.”

“Ah yes, not yet killed by the dangerous world of academia. I see you’ve set up a personal open wifi hotspot under the cafe’s name.”

“You can’t prove that’s me.”

“Are you scraping personal data from all these innocent people?”

“I’m not going to steal from them or sell it, Baby Star, so put those judgey eyes away. I just need a lot of… noise, to cover my own activities, and real people’s data makes better noise than fake data.”

She fluttered her lashes jokingly. “Sounds like an invasion of privacy to me, still.”

“Pot. Kettle.”

“Didn’t you go to jail for doing this?”

“Yes, and I learned my lesson life a good reformed citizen. Don’t do it inside government buildings.” He closed his laptop and looked up. “What do you need from me today?”

“Who says I need anything?” Sasha sipped Hermann’s milkshake. “Maybe I just wanted to see a dear friend I haven’t seen for two years.”

“Ah yes, so sorry for assuming. Good to see you, how have you been?”

“I’ve been great, thank you, Hermann, but I actually came to see you because I need something.”

“Colour me surprised. How can I help you, Baby Star?”

“Can you track a mobile phone for me?”

“Yes, obviously, provided you have the – oh.” Hermann flipped through the papers she handed him, and scowled. “Terrible choice of phone model _and_ provider.”

“I know, right?!”

“I mean, any smartphone is a terrible idea, security-wise, but even taking that into consideration… he doesn’t use facebook or read emails on this thing, does he?”

“I haven’t exactly gone through his phone to check, but he’s the type of guy that probably would.”

“Christ.”

“I need to know exactly where this phone is. Like, what building it’s in. Can you do it?”

“Yeah, probably. But… are you sure you want me to?”

“What? Of course. That’s why I’m here.”

“I mean, it… you’ve got a stable life and all that. If you’re asking me to, I don’t know, stalk an ex-boyfriend or something – ”

“No, no! It’s not… I guarantee you that he wouldn’t press charges for this or anything. He definitely wants me to find him.”

“Mmm. You’re not in trouble, are you, Baby Star?”

“No,” Sasha lied. “How much time do you need?”

“An hour or two at most. And two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“You can’t just do a favour for an old friend?” Sasha asked jokingly.

“It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. Don’t insult us both.”

She laughed, and pulled the money out of her pocket. “I’m going to want a receipt for this.”

“For an illegal phone hack?”

“Of course. How else can I claim it as a work expense?”

Hermann just shook his head. “You’re so weird, Baby Star.”

She handed his nearly-empty milkshake back. “Pot. Kettle.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha meets with a friend. Tim meets with a... "friend". Martin, against all reason, somehow manages to have an even worse time.

Martin lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He didn’t know how long he’d been there. He had, in the background hum of his mind not entirely consumed with the puzzle he was trying to solve, figured out what must have happened. Somehow, when Tim had been freeing him from the film, a couple of frames had ended up in his pocket. When he’d emptied his pockets before bed, just chucking everything at his bedside table and not really caring where it ended up, the two frames had landed on top of his bedside lamp, one on top of the other. And when he’d awoken from some horrible nightmare he could no longer remember and reflexively turned his lamp on, the light had projected the two film frames, superimposed on each other, onto his ceiling, turning two images of an animatronic spider into… something a lot more complicated.

And now he couldn’t stop looking at it.

It had eight legs, it had sixteen legs, it had four legs, it had thirty two legs. It looked at him, it did not. It had fangs, bared; it faced away, with no mouth parts visible. It didn’t move, of course; it was a still image made of two other still images. But the details obscured each other, and any perspective he tried showed a different spider, from a different angle, doing a different thing. Which was the real image?

There was a secret in there. If he kept studying it, he’d be able to see how it worked.

He could stop, once he figured out how everything worked.

\-------------------------

  
  


“Sorry, Baby Star. Can’t do it.”

“What do you mean, you can’t do it? It’s a mobile phone. I guarantee he doesn’t have any kind of… of special security. Jon doesn’t think of stuff like that. I once saw him type ‘google’ into google.”

“I know. I should be able to do it, but somehow all I’m getting is some kind of random noise? It doesn’t make sense.”

“So his location’s… corrupted, somehow?”

“It’s a puzzle and no mistake. By all accounts it should be perfectly trackable, because you got his tower, right? So his phone’s communicating with the towers just fine and that means they’re getting the information they need, but when I try to access it…” Hermann shrugged. “I tested on a couple of other phones and they’re coming up fine, so it’s not a weird security update. Sorry.” He went to hand the money back, but she waved a hand dismissively.

“Do something else for me, then. There’s got to be some other way to find him.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me think.” She bit her lip. “Can you.. make his phone take photos, or video, and send them to us?”

Hermann chuckled. “I’m not a wizard. I can get into the back-end, but for that kind of thing, he’d need the right software installed, and from the look of the phone I don’t think he has it. Nor did you give me the info I’d need to access it if he does, so unless you have more on his phone you haven’t given me…”

“No. Dammit.”

“It’d probably just show us the inside of his pocket, anyway.”

“Okay. The mic, then. Can you make him call me? So I can hear what’s going on?”

“Maybe. Haven’t tried that with this kind of phone. But I’ll… actually, there might be a backend hack for that, even if I can’t. The audio would be messy, but – ”

“Whatever you can get is useful. Anything that might give me a clue as to where he is, and what’s going on over there.”

“Timeline?”

“Faster is better.”

“Be talking soon then, Baby Star.”

\----------------------

  
  


M artin lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He’d figured it out. The problem was that the spider was a distraction. It was the background that mattered. Everything important always happened in the background, supporting the big, flashy centrepiece that held everyone’s attention while the webs worked and worked…

He could see them on the ceiling, strangely clear for something being so clumsily projected. In both frames, the spider stood in front of a large cobweb backdrop, each fascinating in its own individual right, but together forming a complex pattern almost beyond human understanding. Turning and twisting, strands intersecting in an organised system that he was sure he could understand if he just managed to follow one line all the way to the centre…

His eyes burned. He kept forgetting ti blink, so lost he was in the lines. His chest felt heavy, but he knew he wouldn’t suffocate; whenever he came close, his hindbrain would kick in and reflexively force a breath. So there was no need to divert important brainpower from the task at hand, unravelling that maze of lines that comprised the web.

He could stop, once he figured out how everything worked.

\------------------

  
  


“So the Archivist sent a lackey, hmm? Too afraid to face me again?”

Tim sipped his latte and regarded the woman across from him evenly. “I’m not here because of that arsehole. It’s Jude, right?”

“Ooh, first-name basis already. Getting a little familiar, are we, mister…?”

“Tim. I need someone dead, and I can’t do it myself.”

“Oh, really? And you thought you could just whistle me up and I’d play assassin for you?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Jude smiled in a way that showed too many teeth. “This generation of Watchers sure is presumptuous. Of course, if killing is what you want, I’m happy to…” she reached forward and pressed two fingers to his collarbone.

Tim didn’t flinch.

“Really? You want me to believe you’re not afraid to die?”

“Not really relevant, is it? Honestly, I’d prefer to live long enough to kill certain bastards who ruined my life, but other than that, I’ve got nothing to lose. And I can’t stop you, so make up your mind over whether you’re going to kill me and stop wasting my time.”

Jude laughed and withdrew her hand. “Okay, you’ve earned my curiosity. Who does the Watcher’s lackey want dead so badly he’d risk his life to ask my help?”

“Her name is Mary Sue. She’s an archival assistant at the Magnus Institute. Here’s her address.” He handed a piece of paper over. “I had a look around and considered setting the house ablaze myself, but I’m pretty sure she’d survive. You’re more… experienced.”

“She’s your coworker.”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to kill her.”

“I want her dead. I don’t particularly care whether it’s you or not.”

“What kind of soap opera lunacy is happening in that place? I thought you were supposed to be more restrained than us.”

Tim shrugged. “My reasons are my own. Will you do it?”

“For something in return.”

“Of course. What do you want?”

“I want something from the Institute. Something valuable, something powerful that they won’t want to lose. Get it for me, and we have a deal.”

“Great. What is it?”

Jude blinked. “Really? You’ll betray your own just like that?”

“If you think I care one bit about what happens to the Institute, you’ve massively misread my situation. What do you want?”

Jude hesitated. “Well, it’s actually nothing powerful. I don’t even know if it’s there, any more, or where you’d find it, but…”

“So I may or may not be able to buy your help. Fantastic. What is it?”

Jude told him. He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment.

“So we have a deal?” she pressed. “If you can get it for me, I’ll take out this Mary Sue?”

“You take out Mary without hurting any bystanders. And if you fail, she can’t know anyone from the Institute was involved in organising it.”

“Ugh, you’re no fun. Fine.”

“Great. I’ll start looking for your payment. Good day.” He got up and left. Being close to Jude made him uncomfortable. There was something in her eyes… something that he dreaded one day seeing in Jon’s.

Making deals with monsters to kill monsters. What had his life come to?

\---------------------

  
  


M artin lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He’d figured it out. The problem was that the  background was a distraction.  It was the medium that mattered; the noise in the grain of the film itself. Everyone ignored noise, but noise, too, was information. And noise was rarely noise. It was just a pattern that the observer couldn’t understand, so they dismissed it.

The noise in the film told the story of the composition of the film. The noise in the film told the story of the manufacturing process. The noise in the film determined the experience of the film, so if you followed it back, got the starting conditions, you could follow it forward, predict the result. If you tinkered just right, if you knew how other plans, the plans of lesser plotters, the plans of simpler minds overlaid on it, making the webs in the background, the spiders in the foreground, then your noise could influence and twist them into the desired shapes and they would never even know you were there. He just had to keep studying it long enough to figure out the technique.

He could stop, once he figured out how everything worked.

\-------------------

  
  


“Bad news first, Baby Star – we can’t force his phone to call. My software guy says that’s not really something you can make a mobile phone do at a distance, not unless the phone itself has the software for it.”

Sasha tried not to feel too disappointed as she sipped her latte. “Yeah, you did warn me that might be the case. Thanks for trying.”

“We got something, though.” Hermann grinned. “Remember how I said I might have a hack through the backend?”

“So you, what… accessed the microphone, or…?”

Hermann laughed uproarously, causing several other cafe patrons to glance over, then look away quickly. “Jesus, girl, do you have any idea how a mobile phone works? Nothing the microphone does goes through the backend. Well…” he winked. “Nothing the official microphone does goes through the backend. But  you’ll  _love_ this. ” 

Hermann reached into his bag and slapped a mobile phone onto the table, and Sasha braced herself for the upcoming presentation. This was part and parcel with working with people like Hermann – he worked for the love of the art, and that meant that you paid in more than just cash. You also had to listen to him describe his tricks to you. She paid attention, and tried to learn something.

“Okay, so this here is the model of phone your quarry’s using. And this here, is your quarry’s phone’s insides.” He pulled a small tool out of his pocket and expertly disassembled the phone, laying the back aside. “You know what this is?” he asked, indicating what looked like a random spot in the phone with his tool.

“You know I’m not a hardware girl, Hermann,” she sighed.

“You could be if you wanted to.”

“But then I’d have less to pay you for, wouldn’t I? What is it?”

“A gyroscope. All modern smartphones have them, to tell the phone what angle it’s being held at so it knows when to use landscape or portrait mode. In most phones, I’d have to install malware to get the sensitivity up, but we lucked out with your quarry, because this model has a janky gyroscope.” He grinned. “It’s way too sensitive. It’s also not usually transmitted in the backend, but if you happen to have some credentials for requesting phone diagnostics like I do, you can get it over the network.”

“And how does an oversensitive gyroscope help us?”

“A gyroscope moves with the phone, Baby Star. That means it also moves with the air around the phone. This baby can pick up vibrations as high as about 200, maybe 220 Hz. Do you know what the frequency range of human voices is?”

“Wait. You turned the gyroscope into a microphone?”

“A bad phone manufacturer did that for me. But I got the gyroscopic signal to transmit over the network, and that takes a lot of creativity when you can’t put malware on the phone itself. I also have a program for you to turn it into noise, but don’t expect a clear signal. You can probably make out most of the words said in an average tone – I’m not promising you any more than that.” He handed over a USB drive. “Login credentials on the drive too, of course. Destroy it when you’re done.”

“Of course. I paid you for the service; how much for the program?”

“Let’s call it a favour owed, shall we?”

“Try to stay a free man long enough to actually call in the favour before you die, alright?”

Hermann laughed. “I’m reformed into a model citizen, Baby Star. You know that. Take care of yourself, now.”

“You too, you old coot.” Sasha finished her latte and left, resisting the urge to look back over her shoulder. Every time she left a meeting with Hermann, it felt like the last time she’d see him. And someday, it really would be.

But she had what she needed. Now, it was time to focus on saving Jon.

\------------------

  
  


M artin lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He’d figured it out. The problem was that the  noise was a distraction.  Looking deeper, the

The globe in Martin’s lamp blew, plunging the room into darkness. He squeezed his burning eyes shut, willing tears forth to moisten them, and sat up, every muscle cramped and screaming after… minutes? Hours? Days? Of inactivity.

He reached for the lamp and, not daring to open his eyes, snatched up the frames of film, tearing them into quarters with the strength of desperation and balling the pieces up in one hand. He should burn them. Just to be safe.

His hands were sweaty. Probably to be expected. He didn’t think anything strange about it, until he smelled the vinegar.

Martin launched himself out of bed and flicked on the bedroom light. The fragments in his left hand were dissolving into vinegar before his eyes. He tried to drop them, but the liquid stuck them to his hand. By the time he’d gotten to the bathroom and turned the tap on, the fragments of film had disappeared entirely.

Martin scrubbed at his hand for at least ten minutes. But no matter how much he scrubbed, under the artificial floral scent of the soap he could still smell, very faintly, the acrid tang of vinegar.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias does spooky shit.

Secretly, it always bothered Elias that even he couldn’t properly navigate the tunnels. He understood why – they were confusing by design, on a metaphysical level, an ever-changing system that no human mind should be able to navigate, and after everything he liked to believe that he was, at least, still human. A map, while possible to obtain, would be too convoluted for a human mind to memorise  in the limited amount of time that it was useful. He knew, logically, that he shouldn’t expect to be able to navigate the tunnels with any reliability.

He still felt that he should be an exception to that rule, though. His gifts of perception far outstripped anyone else’s, even those of his strongest archivists at their peak, before they burned out. He’d helped design these very tunnels, so he should have at least some sense of their layout. In a way, they were a part of him, as much a part of him as the old body sitting in the centre of the maze.  But no – on the outskirts of the tunnels, he was as lost as anyone else. He had to do the hard work of figuring things out passage by passage, just like anyone else.

But there were two places within the old prison tunnels that he could always find with no trouble. The Panopticon, of course, which always burned bright in his awareness, a place he could never lose. And The Library, whose visibility in his awareness was… variable.

In the early hours of Monday morning, The Library was more difficult than usual to find. This was a very good sign.

It meant that his Archivist was very likely still alive.

The Magnus Institute had two libraries. One of them was the greatest known collection of paranormal research texts in the world, which even those who looked down on the Institute as a whole looked upon with envy. The eyes of the greatest paranormal researchers in the world had browsed its shelves, looking for secrets.

The other was The Library, which no eyes but Jonah Magnus’ had beheld since it was installed two centuries ago.

In Gertrude’s day, The Library had called to him almost constantly, a starving and needy thing demanding his attentions, and he would’ve been able to find it blindfolded. Now, he had to follow a faint thread of connection through cramped and winding tunnels until his hands pressed to stone that would move aside for very few people. For a moment, he felt a jolt of panic, wondering if it would finally refuse to move for him.

But it didn’t. The stone moved, and he was among the books, the tug of temptation to sit down and read enveloping him like an old blanket.

There  _was_ a compulsion in the books that he had taken from Albrecht von Closen, all that time ago, but it wasn’t a particularly strong one. This was no coffin determined to drag people down into the pressing earthy dark,  no wayward meat grinder that sang of the siren call of flesh.  The purpose of The Library was to ensnare those already curious. A mind that wasn’t sufficiently curious, that had to be forced, was a poor meal indeed.

And Elias was curious, of course he was. But he was also sensible. Even when the other compulsion of The Library was strong, that insistent, demanding voice that roared in his skull to  _Sit in the Circle, Sing with the Stones, be the Seer and See, be me be me BE ME_ , he had held firm. Knowledge was a tool, had to be a tool, sought for its power and use and not for its own sake. Otherwise, he would be consumed by it. Like Von Closen had been. Like Johan von Wurttemberg had been.

It could be difficult to remember such things, when one served the Eye. Elias forgot, constantly; he’d taken a lot of risks and burned a lot of resources in the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But he wasn’t nearly foolish enough to listen to The Library. No matter how the curiosity burned, he knew better than to become a part of this thing, this raging force he’d twisted to his will to the point where it might almost have been mistaken for a piece of the Eye (an easy but dangerous mistake to make), this hungry place that demanded the sacrifice of human minds.

He would never, ever allow himself to become the Archivist.

In Gertrude’s day, while she stubbornly resisted her role as much as she could, The Library had been hungry and demanding and tried to draw him in as a better candidate, one that could properly keep things ticking over. But now, it was quiet. Sated. Things were as they should be.

“Oh, well _done_ , Jon,” Elias breathed as he ran his finger along a row of books. Elias had not, in fact, read most of the books. Oh, some he had; the ones that were important enough, or safe enough, and they’d tried to burrow profound secrets into his mind as such artefacts are wont to do, but on the whole he knew it was a dangerous game to listen to the singing of the stones. It was all too easy to sing along. 

It was one of the reasons he’d never really bothered to track down the strays. He had enough of The Library gathered that its location “belonged” to him, at least enough to wrap it up in the Panopticon and the Institute, under his control, so why add more dangerous elements? The other books were perfectly fine where they were, drifting uncontained about the world and sowing their random terror. He certainly had no use for them.

Anyway, bending the  _entire_ Library to the service of the Eye would be greedy. 

Elias’ fingers lingered for a moment on the spine of one of the thicker tomes, a book with a sort of heaviness about it in the air. It was easily the width of his hand and bound in simple, black leather, like most of the books, its title made out in gold capitol letters on the spine: _BABEL_.

It was one of the foundational texts in the library, and one of the few he’d actually read, back in the early years before he’d realised the danger. It had taken him eleven months to get through, eleven months of persistent headaches and not enough sleep as he tried to untangle the dense prose of the story, written  small and cramped  across those endless fragile pages. After he was finally done, out of curiosity, he’d gone back and counted the words, careful not to read them again. The story was less than two thousand words long.

It wasn’t what he was here for today.

The second book his finger stopped at was called _Principles of the Circle_. He had skimmed the introductory chapter of that one, back at the beginning, to gain enough knowledge to be able to properly steal The Library, and opened it again when Leitner had started collecting books, just long enough to satisfy himself that Leitner wasn’t at risk of stealing his prize. It contained deep truths about The Library, he knew, and deep truths about the world as a whole. If he could understand that book, it would be child’s play to find any missing piece he desired. Including the Archivist.

It would also quite probably cost him his sanity, which simply wasn’t worth the risk. Jon was replaceable. His mind was not.

So he continued until he found another book, labelled simply _Accounts_. This one, he pulled off the shelf, and sat down at the heavy oak desk in the centre of the room with a notepad and his favourite pen.

“Well then,” he murmured to himself, “let us for now operate on the assumption that Jon is still alive.”

What Elias wrote on that pad would not have been called, by any normal mind, mathematics. He was not deriving basic information from starting figures. He was drawing it from nothing, from instinct, from… well, from the inherent truth and knowledge of the library itself, with a little help from his patron. He had learned some of this, and invented some of it himself; he was following the consequences of the bindings he had put on the Institute when it was constructed.

He was trying to determine exactly how much metaphysical control he had over Mary Sue.

The answer was not as enlightening as he would have hoped. If he was calculating correctly – and there was every possibility that he wasn’t – the thing wearing the face of Mary wasn’t truly trapped and bound to Jon in the way that Tim, Sasha and Martin were; nor was the mask, not really, unless it believed that it was. His control over Mary seemed to extend to her belief in his control over her.

A flimsy tether, at best. He had no idea what she believed on the matter. Or what counted as 'belief' for something like her.

Well, useful information nevertheless. If he was lucky, the other assistants would kill her, or she’d die in the failed Unknowing, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it any more.

Or she might just get bored and leave. That would also be acceptable.

Elias made his way back to his office. Leaving the library was always harder than finding it, but he was quite experienced at this sort of thing by now. If he wasn’t so distracted, he might have thought to Look into his office before opening the door, and might not have been surprised by the bucket of water and blue food dye that immediately tipped off the door and splashed across the carpet, showering his legs before he could get far enough back.

Ah, yes. There was that little ongoing problem to deal with, too.

After he changed his suit.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The assistants make a plan. Elias shows mercy.
> 
> Contains brief discussion of animal death.

**Contains brief discussion of animal death**

\--------------

Mary always got in for work at 8:59am, so the other archive assistants made sure to get in an hour earlier on Monday.

“Do we have any updates on Jon?” Martin asked as Sasha walked in, listening to something on her phone with one earbud. “Since you found the approximate area he’s in, I mean.”

“Well, he’s alive,” she said. “Or at least, whoever’s got his phone is.” She grimaced. “He keeps moving around and upsetting the gyroscope. I think he might have the phone in his pocket.”

“A logical place to keep a phone,” Tim commented, adjusting the shoulder strap of his slinky black cocktail dress. “By the say, Sasha, do you know Elias’ new phone number? He changed it on me and I’m not done signing him up for promotional offers for things yet.”

“Do we have anything more than ‘alive’?” Martin pressed.

“Not really. I’m supposed to have audio, but so far it’s just static and garbage. Either nobody’s done any talking, or there’s something wrong with the setup.”

“You bugged him?” Martin asked. “When?”

“To say I ‘bugged him’ is giving this hack job a lot more credit than it’s worth, believe me. I’m using hardware in ways it’s not meant to be used and if it’s in his pocket, I don’t think we’re going to pick anything up. But I’ll keep listening, just in case.” She tapped her earbud. “You guys got anything for the monster we’re about to see in an hour?”

“Not really,” Tim said. “We could try to axe her to death.”

“At this stage I think our best bet is to play along,” Martin said. “If we can keep her… entertained… until we come up with a more permanent solution, that’s probably safest for everyone. But we shouldn’t let her know that we’re trying to stop the Unknowing, obviously.”

“How the hell are we supposed to keep that from her?” Tim asked.

“I don’t know. But if she’s trying to end the world and she knows we’re getting in the way…”

“So we not only have to find our boss and stop the apocalypse, we have to play keep-away with a monster,” Sasha said. “This won’t go terribly, I’m sure.”

“I think it’s doable,” Martin said. “She’s very… easy to fascinate, at least temporarily. And she doesn’t seem to think we mean her any harm, so if she’s willing to play nice and we play nice…”

“It won’t last forever,” Tim warned.

“No, it won’t. But if we can keep things going until we get Jon back, maybe he can get something out of her that’ll help us deal with the problem.”

“With spooky monster powers, you mean?”

“Tim…”

“No, I’m all for it. Set those two against each other, leave the rest of us out of it as much as possible. Of course, it means we’ve got to worry about Mary hanging around in the meantime – ”

The door to the archives opened, and all three assistants looked up guiltily.  But it wasn’t Mary, arriving early. It was Elias. He looked Tim up and down, lips pressing tight.

“Dress code specifies that shoulders must be covered, Tim.”

“Oh, sorry, boss. Forgot we had a dress code.” He reached under his desk to retrieve a neon feather boa, which he settled over his shoulders. “Better?”

“I’d like to see you in my office in thirty minutes, Tim.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll try to remember that.”

“Mmm.” Elias left.

“Don’t you think you might be pushing him a bit too far?” Martin asked.

“I dunno, let me check. Do I still work here? Yes? Then I guess I’m not pushing far enough.”

“He might be dangerous.”

“Martin, he’s about the only thing in this place that hasn’t tried to kill one of us. You want to play nice with a world-ending monster but you’re scared of Elias? Come on.”

“What did you do to put that expression on his face?” Sasha asked.

“Well, you know the carpet in his office? Lovely pale cream colour?”

“Yeah?”

“Very light, very easily stained?”

“Oh god. Do I want to know?”

\--- \------------------

  
  


E lias didn’t miss Tim’s little smirk as he glanced down at the new rug in the doorway of Elias’ office, but he ignored it.

“Tim. Have a seat.”

Tim sat down and rested his feet, sheathed in bedazzled crocs, on Elias’ desk. “What can I do for you, boss?”

“You could try taking this job remotely seriously,” Elias snapped, then forced himself to calm down. This shouldn’t be a problem. He’d dealt with… restless archival assistants before. He was letting the stress of finally being near the end, of finally having a plan in Jon, get to him; he couldn’t afford that.

“Oh, I take my job very seriously,” Tim said. “Reading weird supernatural reports, moving files from boxes into other boxes, occasionally nearly getting killed by some eldritch horror… all very thrilling stuff.”

“Tim, if your behaviour doesn’t improve then I am going to have to pursue disciplinary action.”

“What, fire me, you mean?”

“You know perfectly well I can’t do that.”

Tim sat up suddenly and leaned forward, angry. “I know perfectly well you  _won’t_ do that. I don’t for a second believe you can’t.”

“The result is the same, I’m afraid. What do you think would happen if I did respond to these childish tantrums by firing you?”

“Your little institute would be a lot more peaceful and we could all go on with out lives.”

“No. The next archival assistant who got it into their head that they wanted to jump ship would simply start this nonsense, secure in the knowledge that if they annoyed me enough, they’d have an easy way to leave. No, Tim; I’m afraid that’s not an option. But I will not continue to tolerate this behaviour.”

“Kill me, then. Something here is going to. I’m in the way of your scary evil plans? Then kill me.”

“No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

“Really? Won’t kill me, won’t fire me… I guess we have nothing to discuss.” He started to get up.

“Sit _down_ , Tim.”

He did.

Elias could break him. He had the means to do so. For someone with Tim’s past, it would be easy; easy to remove this little irritant that had been  throwing his weight around for the express purpose of making things difficult for so long.

But he wasn’t going to. Tim was still useful, and Elias was not in the habit of needlessly wasting resources. He was going to have to be a bit more subtle than that.

“I think I finally understand the problem here. You’re so caught up in the certainty that you’re doomed here, that the worst is inevitable, that you believe that you are not afraid of death. And therefore, that there’s nothing I or anybody else can do to hurt you. But the problem with that reasoning, Tim, is the very flawed assumption that the worst thing that can happen to you is death.” He leaned forward. “But I have a wider array of methods of persuasion at my disposal than you might think. Would you like to see an example?”

“Oooh, are you going to threaten me with a particularly painful and gruesome death? So scary.”

“No. I’m going to talk to you about kittens.”

Tim frowned in confusion. “What?”

“Kittens, from when they are very small and blind, are left alone by their mother in safe places while she hunts. She might leave them for hours at a time, perhaps up to a day, secure in the knowledge that when she comes back, they will be there waiting for her. Unless, of course, they’re found by two young boys who don’t know very much about kittens and try, in their well-meaning little way, to save the animals that they assume to be lost and abandoned. How old were you, Tim? Nine, wasn’t it?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Yes, nine; it was going to be your tenth birthday in two weeks and you thought that if you hid them from your parents until then, you could convince them to let you keep them as a birthday present. So you ‘rescued’ the kittens, you and your brother, from the alley, and hid them in the very back of the shed, trying to feed them scraps of tuna and sausage.

“You were young. You weren’t to know that kittens need to be kept very warm. You weren’t to know that they were far too young, and needed to be fed special kitten milk with a teat. You weren’t to know that kittens that young need help even going to the bathroom. So when they died of neglect, cold and hungry and uncomfortable, crying for a mother that had no hope of finding them, one could argue that you weren’t really to blame. Do you want to know what they felt, Tim?”

It was interesting, how quickly the blood drained from Tim’s face under the weight of a sudden experience that wasn’t his. He whimpered, knuckles whitening as he gripped his chair.

Elias let up after just a few seconds. He wasn’t  _cruel_ .

“What was that supposed to prove?” Tim asked. “You really think that little trick is going to change anything?”

“No. That is what we call a demonstration, Tim. So that you have some idea of the scope of things. If you like, I could arrange for a stronger one. Perhaps we could discuss some other formative event in your life… something about Daniel Stoker, perhaps?”

There must have been some blood left in Tim’s face, because he suddenly became even paler. “You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I? Aren’t you curious, Tim? Would you like to know how it felt, right at the end? What he was thinking when – ”

“ _Don’t_.”

“Then we agree. There is no need for further unpleasantness on either side. Right?”

Tim glared at him.

“Right, Tim?”

“… Right.”

“Excellent. Now, I believe you have some archiving to do? I myself am _very_ busy.”

Tim leapt to his feet and practically ran out the door.  Elias turned to his computer and started filling out the necessary budget request forms for having the carpet replaced.

He’d handled that meeting pretty well, he thought.


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The archival team live with the fact that they have a monster coworker.

Martin looked up from the statements he was organising to see Tim, white as a sheet, stumble in through the door.

“Holy shit, Tim,” Sasha exclaimed, leaping to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Martin opened his mouth to offer tea, but even he could see that that wasn’t going to help. They couldn’t help without knowing what had happened. So instead he said, “Is it something we need to watch out for?”

“What?”

“Whatever you just saw. If there’s yet another danger running around here that might kill us or something…”

It was a dirty trick, Martin knew, but it worked. Tim sank into his chair and nodded. “Turns out Elias does have spooky magic powers.”

“What did he do to you?” Sasha growled.

“Nothing. Not really.”

“What can he do?” Martin tried.

“He knows things, I guess? I don’t think it’s mind reading, because it was stuff I didn’t exactly know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he could do that too. Because he can… do the opposite.”

“What?”

“He can project things. Into your mind. Concepts, and… experiences.”

Sasha’s eyes widened. “Oh, god. Did he – ”

“No.” Tim took a deep, shuddering breath. “Not yet.”

Martin watched the exchange between the two. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but he didn’t think it helpful to ask. So instead, he went to make that tea.

Mary was in the break room, preparing a blackberry and mint herbal infusion, and smiled brightly at his approach. “Good morning, Martin! Did you have a good weekend?”

“Yes,” he lied in his best ‘I didn’t spend the entire thing paralysed on my bed staring at a spooky spider projection’ voice. “How was your weekend, Mary?”

“It was fine.”

M artin was surprised at his own calm as he stood next to her and started making tea. She could grab him so easily. She could kill him so easily.

But it was already clear that she wasn’t going to, not at the moment. So it was irrelevant. He found himself dismissing it.

“Do anything fun?” he asked conversationally.

“I bought some house plants. If you give them enough water and sunlight, they can live in your house and brighten it up.”

“Developing a green thumb, are we?” he asked, and then clarified when she glanced at her own thumbs, “I mean, are you getting into gardening?”

“I don’t really have a garden. But I have five house plants.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be great at caring for them.” Martin watched her out of the corner of his eye as he finished preparing the tea. If she walked into the archives and the others were… difficult… how would she react? Would there be a problem? Probably not, he decided. Sasha and Tim were both a lot better at masking fear than he was. He’d been absolutely terrified on Friday, and she’d kept playing along. So long as Tim didn’t outright attack her, continuing to humour her should be fine.

But he hoped they found a more permanent solution soon. He had no idea how long they had before she’d get bored with them.

“Can you take this one to Sasha?” he asked, indicating one of the cups. “I’ve run out of hands.”

“Yes, Martin.” She picked up the cup in her free hand, and the pair headed for the archives. 

W hen Mary entered, Sasha and Tim both tensed, but otherwise didn’t react. Mary didn’t seem to notice, placing the tea in front of Sasha with a cheerful “Good morning!” before heading straight to her own computer to get to work. 

“Thank you, Mary,” Sasha said cautiously.

“Martin made it.”

Sasha visibly relaxed, thanked Martin and sipped the tea. Martin passed a cup to Tim, who pulled a bottle of vodka out of his desk to top it up.

The atmosphere was quiet and tense as everyone got to work. They couldn’t talk about the Unknowing in front of Mary, and if the circus had Jon then that meant it was probably best not to discuss his situation, either. Martin had no illusions about whether Mary’s friendship game would hold up if she had to choose between the circus and protecting Jon. The longer he could keep her from having to make decisions like that, the longer they’d be safe.

After about five minutes, Mary ventured, “Tim, you look sad. Did you get enough sleep?”

“I’m fine.”

“Your expression looks – ”

“I do NOT want to talk about it.”

“Ah.” Mary nodded. “It’s a secret.” She didn’t press the issue.

After another half hour or so of tense filing and typing throughout the room, Sasha sat bolt upright in her chair and put her other earbud in.  She was smart enough not to say anything in front of Mary, but Martin watched her face go pale and deliberately expressionless. A few minutes later, she resumed typing, and Martin got an email from Sasha, containing an audio file. 

“Hey Mary,” Sasha said, getting up, “can you come and help me get a box?”

“Okay, Sasha.” The girls left; Tim and Martin both immediately plugged in headphones and listened to the file.

Sasha had been right; whatever magic she’d pulled to bug Jon’s phone, the audio quality was awful.  It sounded like the phone was being shaken about in a bag of marbles, and Martin had to listen to it three times to make out any real conversation. Some of the words, he knew, he’d never pick up.

“ – so disappointed, Archivist!” a voice said. Martin was pretty sure that the voice was unfamiliar, but it was hard to be certain, given the quality. “You’re really not doing a good job of healing that hand. I’ll be --- skin in three months for –- and I’d like to have two hands for the dance!”

If Jon replied, the phone didn’t pick it up.

“Of course it --- A good lotion --- before we peel you! But all those little scars are --- really, Archivist, you should take better care of your skin! It’s just inconsiderate to other people who might want to use it.”

Another pause. In which Jon may or may not have said something.

“Well, soon enough it --- just hang in there!”

That was the end of the file.  Once Martin had listened to it three times, and put together all the words he could, he almost cried with relief.

Jon was alive. The speaker had called him “Archivist”; that meant they were talking to Jon. Jon was alive and had his phone. Although Martin wondered dimly how much battery power that phone still had, and how soon they were going to lose any way to track him at all.

He was also, if Martin was interpreting the discussion correctly, going to be skinned for the ‘dance’ in three months, which… wasn’t great, but it gave them time to rescue him and a timeline for the Unknowing.

Oh, god. If the speaker’s dance was the unknowing dance… the world might only have three months left.

No, don’t think like that. The world wasn’t doomed. It just meant they would be saving the world in three months.

That didn’t make him feel a whole lot better.

But Jon was alive. His kidnappers presumably needed him alive until they skinned him (ew!), so he’d stay alive for three months.  He was, using a limited an d literal definition of the word, technically safe for now.

A nd that made everything else alright.

\---------------

  
  


This, Sasha noted, was the second monster that she’d willingly met with in an isolated location, alone.

Michael had wanted to see her because he wanted them to defeat Jane Prentiss. What did Mary want?

“Why are you here, Mary?” Sasha found herself asking.

Mary looked puzzled. “ I work here.”

Not what Sasha had meant, but clarifying might bring up the Unknowing, and it was best to avoid that topic altogether.  What was safe to talk about with her… monster coworker… to distract her while her other coworkers… spied on her… kidnapped boss… 

When had her life gotten this weird?

“Well… did you have a good weekend?”

Sasha half-listened while Mary chatted about houseplants  and scanned the shelves for a box to pretend to need help with that would take a while to fetch, so the boys had time to finish with the audio clip. Dealing with Mary was going to be a very delicate line to walk, until they found a more permanent solution.

She hoped they would find one soon.

\------------------

  
  


Mary was having a pretty good day. She’d woken up nice and early to water her houseplants and had a good, well-rounded breakfast (important for health and happiness) before heading into work. Thanks to Martin’s help, she was pretty sure she had the hands almost right – some of the insides were a bit fudged, but they moved properly, at least – which helped her type even faster, so she was having a very productive work morning. And now she had an opportunity to practice her small talk with Sasha.

But Tim wasn’t having a good day, and while she knew that talking about problems with friends made people feel better, it didn’t seem like Tim wanted to talk to her. And Jon, if Nikola had him, was probably having a terrible time. She wished she could make all her friends happy at once.

Jon…

Mary didn’t know what Nikola needed him for, exactly, but it probably wasn’t going to be anything he was happy about.  And that wasn’t… well, it was good, from a more distant standpoint, for the Circus to have everything they needed for the Unknowing, even if Jon was included. But it wasn’t something Mary liked. Mary wanted her friends to be safe. But Mary had been constructed to wait out until the Unknowing. So… 

How, exactly, was Mary supposed to feel about any of this?

It wouldn’t matter any more, once the Unknowing was underway and the mask was discarded. But it mattered now.  She didn’t know what the appropriate position on any of this was. Sasha would know, Sasha knew how to be human better than she did, but she didn’t think a human was going to give her useful information on anything related to the Unknowing. Sasha, if she even knew about it, wouldn’t like it. If the experience that Elias had shared with her on Friday was any indication, then humans were attached to their masks on a level that Mary was still trying to understand. Sasha, like the others, would be terrified at the thought of having their identities torn apart, at the inevitable end of understanding.  Sasha wouldn’t want to lose Sasha, and Mary… 

Mary would miss being Mary. Except… she probably wouldn’t, when she wasn’t Mary any more, would she? But she did  _now_ , she…  was saddened now, by the idea of not being Mary, far more than the little twinge of lingering regret she was sure she would experience when it actually happened.  She almost wanted to regret it more, she was almost proud of the lingering thread of grief over Jan, wishing it was stronger – like that would make the masks important, like importance might somehow magically make them more real.

People were confusing.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha, you really live like this?

Tim was asleep when his phone rang. He reached blindly for it, knocked it to the floor, and cursed. Now he was gonna have to move to pick it up.

“Mm. Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Sasha said. “Jon’s phone battery died. We’ve got all the audio and location data we’re going to get.”

“And why are you telling me at…” he checked the time… “three in the morning?”

“I want you and Martin to come over to mine. We can comb through the audio data, look for anything we might’ve missed, without having to worry about Mary or… any other interruptions.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Well it’ll probably be closer to four by the time you’re all organised and get here, but yeah. I have the right software here and I… don’t want to do this at work.”

“It is THREE. In the MORNING.”

Sasha sighed. “Tim, I know you’re still pissed at Jon, but – ”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Monsterboss is an arsehole but I’m not gonna let him get skinned by evil clowns. I’m on my way. You’d better have good coffee.”

“Plenty of it. How do you think I’m still awake?”

Tim arrived at Sasha’s place about the same time as Martin. Tim had been inside before, and knew what to expect; Martin clearly hadn’t, and the look of bafflement on his face as he tried to reconcile the stacks of random computer parts, various unwashed mugs with novelty slogans, and scattered magazines (on all topics; PC magazines sat in a pile with Woman’s Day, travel brochures and at least one hunting & fishing magazine) with the sharp and well-dressed woman he knew from the office, was comical. He stared at the large rubber duck in a pirate hat hanging in a little crochet net bag from the side of one of her many computer monitors. “Um, what’s…?”

“Ducky? My Partner in Crime. Anyone who uses a computer to do anything useful needs a rubber duck. I’d never get anything done otherwise. How much sugar do you want in your coffee?”

“Um… do you have tea?”

“Of course. How much tea do you want in your coffee? I’m thinking we work on double shots until at least seven, then taper down so we can get into the office in some kind of normal shape. Oh, and I’ve set up spare computers for the two of you.” She waved a hand toward said computers. “I’ve chopped the audio into one-hour segments; there are three cases of speech I’ve found but I think we should comb the rest for any I’ve missed, given how bad the quality is.” 

“Sa-sha,” Tim groaned.

“Ti-mo-thy,” Sasha groaned back.

T im knew he wasn’t going to win, so he grumpily sat down and booted up a computer.

Sasha had helpfully marked the three identified audio clips; he plugged a set of headphones in and listened to those first. The first he’d already heard. The second was a short conversation between three people about “the calliope”; Tim made a mental not to search their evolving digital statement database for anything about calliopes when he got in for work. The third was the most concerning. Whatever Sasha had done to get audio from Jon’s phone  only picked up a very limited range of sounds, so it was hard to know exactly what was going on, but it didn’t sound… great. Some kind of struggle was taking place; the clip was mostly quiet except for occasional bursts of clicking static and someone (the person from the first clip, if Tim had to guess, but it was impossible to be sure) kept admonishing someone else (presumably Jon) to “keep still!” and saying things like “Your Elias hasn’t trained you all that well, has he? This would hurt a lot less if you weren’t so rude about it.” Other bursts of sound weren’t easy to identify but, in context, Tim couldn’t help but consider that they were probably muffled shouting and grunts of pain. 

This circus was going to fucking burn for everything they’d done.

Tim took the coffee Sasha offered in trembling hands and tried to force himself to calm down. He didn’t even look at Martin. He didn’t want to see the expression on his face.

Time to listen to some mindless static, searching for voices. That would help.

Most of the audio that hadn’t been marked for voices had worse static. Maybe Jon was moving around a lot more when he was alone, or maybe there were people talking still, being drowned out by the noise.  Tim’s mind kept wandering from the low, rumbling hum and random clicks and white noise in the audio. There was so much to do in so little time. Getting Jon back meant they could properly question Mary, but that meant revealing they were working against her, and she’d drop the friend act. Meaning he needed to find Jude’s little artefact as quickly as possible… if it even existed. If it was still in the Institute. He needed a plan B in case he couldn’t find it.

And dealing with Jude to kill Mary, especially if it involved technically stealing from the Institute… there was Elias to consider. He knew about those random kittens, he knew about Danny, so Tim didn’t think there was any realistic way of hiding his own dealings from him. Elias hadn’t mentioned Jude in their little… meeting… but he had hired Mary, presumably knowing what she was; if Tim acted against him like this…

Well. If it came to it, if Tim had to choose between getting rid of one of those monster bastards or avoiding Elias’ retaliation, that was an easy choice. He’d do what he had to do to get rid of her. Danny was dead, Danny couldn’t be saved, but his coworkers could, and those clowns could be  _hurt_ . If Tim had the chance to hurt them, and didn’t take it because he was afraid of a little bad memory? He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. That was worse than anything Elias…

No, it wasn’t worse. But it  _should be_ , dammit. If it came down to it, Tim was going to do the right thing,  no matter how Elias retaliated.

After about half an hour of listening to random sound, when a particularly loud staticky shriek blasted into his ears, Tim swore and tore the headphones off. “Argh! This is pointless.”

“If there’s something in here, we _have_ to find it,” Martin said with hollow determination.

“There’s nothing here! It’s just noise.”

“The most important information is always in the noise,” Martin said, seemingly to himself. “Anything outside it, others have already found.”

“Yeah, because you can’t find anything in the noise,” Tim snapped. “That’s why it’s noise.”

“Sometimes you do,” Sasha cut in. “Sometimes you get lucky.”

“And we’ve been remarkably lucky so far, haven’t we. Luck just pouring out of our fucking ears. If Monsterboss would stop moving his phone around for half a fucking minute – ”

“Then he’d probably have stopped breathing,” Sasha pointed out. “Not ideal.”

Martin, slumped in his chair, suddenly sat bolt upright, eyes wide. “The noise!”

“What?”

“Listen.” He pulled his headphones out so the main speakers would come on and played one of the clips.

It was the third audio clip that Sasha had marked. The one with the physical struggle.  Despite the very upsetting content, Martin just looked focused as the clip played, then grinned triumphantly. “Hear that?”

“Yeah, it sounds awful,” Sasha pointed out.

“He’s fighting,” Martin said.

“Yeah, and?”

“ _And_ ,” Martin said patiently, “you can hear the other person talking pretty clearly. A lot less static than most of the audio. Weird, if he’s moving around to much, don’t you think?”

Tim realised. “He hasn’t got the phone on him. It’s nearby, but it’s not in his pocket or anything.”

“It’s not him moving around,” Sasha added. “Something else is moving the phone around, or… or making noise near it.”

“And figuring out what that is,” Martin added with a grin, “is going to tell us a lot about where Jon is.”

\-------------------

  
  


B asira jolted awake and reached for her phone. The memory of the knife across her coworker’s throat, the encroaching dark, and those eyes the only thing piercing it as they stared directly at her, was still sharp in her mind.

The phone was picked up on the second ring. “Mm?”

“Daisy?”

Daisy sighed. “Dreams?”

“Yeah. I… I’m sorry. I’ll let you sleep.”

“No. No. I’m awake.” Daisy seemed to be moving around, probably sitting up. “It’s been a while.”

“I know.”

“You could… come by the station, you know. And talk?”

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

“I guess not.”

After some hesitation, Basira said, “You could come to me. It’d be good to have a partner. And your experience…”

“I… can’t, Basira. I’m needed here. There are things that… I can do more good here.”

“Because you’re the only Sectioned detective? You shouldn’t have to do it all on your own, Daisy.”

“I didn’t have to, when – ” Daisy cut herself off, and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Are you getting help? Professional help?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“Are you going to?”

Daisy laughed. “No. But I’m not having recurring nightmares every night, Basira.”

“Not yet. Working there isn’t good for you, Daisy; it’s not good for any of us.”

“It’s good for the world, though.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Daisy didn’t answer. Basira knew what she must be thinking. Thinking about some of her rougher jobs, some of her extrajudicial jobs, her jobs involving full operational discretion, that she didn’t think Basira knew about. But Daisy wasn’t as subtle as she thought she was.

Basira had never seen the bodies. But that was just because she wasn’t inclined to go digging them up.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For calling you in the middle of the night. I should… you’re busy. I should let you sleep.”

“Basira, I – ”

“We can talk another time, okay?” Basira hung up. Then she lay on her back and stared into the dark for a long time. It was a comforting dark, a real dark, so fundamentally distinct from… _that_ dark.

She’d chickened out, once again, from explaining the part of the recurring nightmare that really worried her to Daisy. Oh, the nightmare itself was awful, being back there in that place, reopening the mental wound every single night, and Daisy could understand that, understood her decision to quit the force enough that she at least tried to hide her own personal hurt over it. Basira knew that she had occasional nightmares too, although not the same one every night without rest. But Basira hadn’t mentioned the man.

She knew it was the man in the Institute that she’d described her experience to, even though it was hard to pay attention to any part of him except those intense, staring eyes that wouldn’t leave but wouldn’t help, a pair of eyes that seemed to be the only important thing about him has he dispassionately observed her predicament.  At first, she’d figured that the logic of him being there kind of made sense; the dreams had started the night after she’d spoken to him, reopening that mental wound, so maybe him listening got… mixed up… in her perception of the event somehow. But the dreams wouldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t leave. He just stood there, watching.

And the thing that really got her? That she had no way to explain to Daisy? He was changing.

At first, he’d shown up looking basically how he had when they’d spoken, but for his penetrating stare. Now, he looked more gaunt every night, his clothing more ragged, his hair more tangled. Recently, he’d been showing up without a shirt at all, and he had the clear look of someone who’d lost far too much weight far too quickly. She’d spied bruises on his throat and  chest and , although it was hard to tell in the darkness and with those eyes so distracting, what might have been rope burns on his arms.

Having recurring nightmares was probably expected, eventually, in her line of work. Having recurring nightmares featuring some kind of nightmare stalker boogeyman modelled on an academic she’d met a couple of times was a little  more  weird. But what was really strange was having a nightmare stalker boogeyman whom, she was more and more certain every night, needed  her  help.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team grows.

Melanie wasn’t having a great day. But she rarely did, any more.

“I’m looking for Jonathan Sims,” she repeated. “You’re sure he’s not in?”

“The archivist is on leave,” the woman repeated in a generic Customer Service Tone. “I’m one of his assistants, though. Perhaps I can help you find what you need?”

No, she couldn’t. Because what Melanie needed – aside from a job, Ghost Hunt UK to get back together, and the whole world to forget they’d ever seen GHOST FREAKOUT UK LOL GHOST HUNTER UNHINGES (NOT CLICKBAIT) – was someone to vouch for her so that she could get into the fucking library and get back to actually doing some fucking ghost hunting. Which meant grovelling to someone she’d insulted the professionalism and integrity of last time she was here, because he was the only employee of the Institute that knew her, however vaguely.

“You can’t,” she said flatly. “When will he be back?”

“I’m not really sure,” she said vaguely, and looked about to say something else when a young man entered the room and saw them talking. His eyes widened. “Ah, hello!” he said. “Don’t worry, Mary, I’ll handle… um, hi there. Can I help you?” The woman left.

“I am looking,” Melanie repeated for what felt like the ten billionth time, “for Jonathan Sims.”

“Right! He’s on leave.”

“So I’ve been told. When will he be back?”

“We’re not sure. But uh, maybe I can help you instead?”

Melanie clenched her jaw and took a deep, calming breath. She reminded herself that it was hardly any of these people’s fault that they were wasting her time, and yelling at them wouldn’t accomplish anything except getting her thrown out of the building.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll come back another time.”

She turned to leave, when yet another man entered the room. Ugh, she was not going to have the same conversation a third time. But this man looked her up and down in a strangely curious, penetrating way, and smiled. “Oh, hello,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to be Melanie King, would you?”

“Yes,” she admitted, bracing for the jokes, but instead he offered her his hand. “Elias Bouchard,” he said. “I’m the head of the Magnus Institute. I must say, I really enjoy your show. Do you happen to know if there’ll be any more episodes soon?”

_Had this guy not seen GHOST FREAKOUT UK_ ? “Um,” Melanie said awkwardly, “probably not. I’m… looking to move into other employment, actually, so there probably won’t be time for…”

“Well, that really is too bad. Your methods were crude, but showed a lot of promise. Hang on, are you saying you’re looking for work?”

“Well, yeah. But I’m here to talk to – ”

“Do you have any experience with archiving?”

“Uh, Elias – ” the other man cut in. Elias ignored him.

“Our previous archivist left these archives in a real state and Jon has complained about their state of disorganisation. I’ve been looking to hire some more assistants for him, to help sort it all out. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

“Elias, you can’t,” the other man protested.

“Really, Martin? Why not?”

The man swallowed nervously. “Well, she’s, uh… she’s unlikely to be qualified for…”

“Now, now, you know that formal qualifications aren’t everything, are they? What do you think, Miss King?”

“Well, truth be told, I actually don’t know anything about archiving…”

“Oh, it’s quite simple to pick up. Of more importance here is your experience in informal research, and with the paranormal. That sort of thing gives someone an eye for seeing what’s relevant in terms of organising a place like this, and I’ve seen enough of your lateral thinking skills on Ghost Hunt UK to know you’d be a real asset here. Should we discuss the details in my office?”

“Elias.”

“Problem, Martin?”

The two met each other’s eyes. After a long moment, Martin looked away.

“Don’t take it,” he said quietly to Melanie, and then hurriedly left the room.

“Is he…?”

“Under a lot of stress right now, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t worry about him, he’s harmless. Shall we?”

Melanie considered. So far as she could tell, this man had just swept in and offered to solve all of her problems at once.

“Sure,” she said.

\----------------------

  
  


“He what?” Sasha asked.

“You didn’t stop him?” Tim asked. “You didn’t warn her?”

“I tried!” Martin angrily stirred his tea, then fumbled and dropped the spoon. “What was I supposed to say? I didn’t have any way to stop him, it’s not like any of us have any leverage on him, and I couldn’t exactly explain to her, could I? ‘I know you don’t know me and this is gonna sound insane, but his guy is an evil manager with eldritch powers trying to bind you in service to an ancient fear god’. There is just no way to make that believable, even to a ghost hunter.”

“Don’t worry,” Sasha said. “We’ll find a way to… deal with him. After Jon. And Mary. And the apocalypse.”

“Which raises an interesting point,” Tim said. “Are we going to explain the apocalypse to the new girl? I mean, that’s going to take a bit of a leap of faith.”

“I’m sure that when she has a look through all the statements it’ll be perfectly believable,” Martin said. “The more important question is whether we’re going to tell her about Mary. Did you guys see that video of her? At the old train yard? I think if we tell her her new coworker’s a monster, she might…”

“Do something that forces a conflict with Mary we can’t win?” Sasha finished. “Yeah. Probably. We shouldn’t tell her.”

“We might have to help her hide,” Martin said. “Mary, I mean.”

“Why? It took us ages to figure it out.”

“Yeah, because we assumed she was from a cult,” Tim said. “We can’t assume Melanie will do the same. Or that Mary won’t just tell her. She hasn’t mentioned anything to either of us, but when Martin asked…”

“I’ll have a talk with Mary,” Sasha said. “Try to explain things and help her… blend in.”

“When did this get so convoluted?” Martin asked. “We need one of those red string wall charts just to keep track of what secrets we’re keeping from who, and why.”

“And we have to stop the clown apocalypse,” Sasha added.

“And we have to stop the apocalypse.”

“I got in contact with my guy,” Sasha said. “Tonight he’s getting me a phone like Jon’s, so we can do the gyroscope thing and try to find out what’s making that static.”

“You think we’ll have much luck?”

“No. It could be anything, and it all just sounds like static. But I mean, what else can we try? Tim, do you want to – ”

“Can’t do anything tonight. I’ll be here late. I’m looking for Adelard Dekker statements, but most of our statements aren’t in the database yet so there’s going to be a lot of box digging.”

“Who?”

“The guy who bound that other thing to the table? Gertrude mentions him making a couple of statements, so I’m hoping that somewhere he talks about how he pulled off that trick. In case we need it for Mary.”

“Well, good luck.”

“I think we all need some of that.”

\----------------

  
  


B asira felt kind of stupid as she walked into the Magnus Institute. She had no idea what she was going to say to Mr Sims when she saw him, but that was kind of the point. She’d see that he was fine, go home, and feel dumb for a couple of days about thinking anything… odd… was going on.

Dreams were weird. They didn’t have to make sense. Her thinking they meant anything was actually wrong was silly. And she could see for herself, and get past it. And maybe the dreams would stop, too.

The lady on the front desk let her through, and she once again headed down to the archives.  One of the assistants was there – what was his name, Matt? – and looked up as she entered.

“Oh! Hello, constable. I didn’t think we’d see… do you need to talk to us more about Gertrude?”

“What?” Oh, right’ the dead old woman. “Uh, no. I’m not with the police any more. I just… is Jonathan Sims in?”

“No, he’s on leave. Everyone keeps asking… we emailed Rosie about this! Uh, sorry, I mean, can I take a message?”

“Um… sure. I have, uh…” oh god, this was stupid. She handed him her business card. “Can you just um, make sure he has this?”

The man glanced at it,  nearly dropping it as he turned it over in his hand . “You’re a private investigator now?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ve been working with Jon?”

“Well, no. But, um… okay, this is going to sound really strange, I just…” Nothing for it. She’d sound like an idiot, she could leave, she could forget the whole thing. “I had a dream that he needed my help.”

“A dream.”

“Yeah.”

“That Jon needed you help.”

“I think so? Look, it doesn’t matter; I’ll just… I’ll just go.”

“How did he look?”

“What?”

“In the dream. Is he… okay?”

“It’s stupid; it was just a dumb – ”

“How did he look?”

Basira hesitated. “Not great, to be honest. A bit, um, scuffed up. And like he’d lost weight too quickly, you know the look.”

The man looked away. “Jesus.”

“Is… is everything okay?”

He looked at the card. Looked at her. Seemed to think. “You’ve dealt with supernatural stuff before, right?”

“I’ve seen some weird stuff. Why?”

“Okay, yeah. We should probably talk.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin hires help. Tim plans to hire help. Sasha gets Mary's help. Nobody wants Melanie's help.

Sasha was out with Mary. Tim and Melanie were who knew where. So Martin sat Basira down and did his best to explain.

“Your boss got kidnapped by an evil circus?”

“Yes.”

“Full of monsters.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Martin hesitated. Trying to explain the Unknowing at this point was probably a bit much. He answered honestly. “We’re not entirely sure. But he’s definitely in a lot of danger. We’ve been trying to find him.”

“Have you gone to the police?”

“We’ve filed a missing person’s report, but who exactly do we report the evil monster circus to?”

“… Point. I know the one detective they’ve got who’d handle something like that, so I guess I can… anyway. How can I help?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who had this weird dream, right?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

“Have you had… prophetic dreams before? Or anything?”

Basira shook her head. “Just this. I don’t know if it’s even prophetic. Might be coincidence.”

“Either way, we could use the help. Is it a case you’re interested in taking? It shouldn’t be hard to convince Elias to approve the expense; it’s not like he seems to be making any headway.”

“Sure. I’ll send you a contract after lunch.”

A fter she left, Martin went to see Elias. 

“Come in, Martin.”

Martin didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You’re trying to stop an apocalypse, are you not? I thought you’d want as many hands on deck as possible. Melanie King is a capable ghost hunter who’s shown that she can comport herself well in times of stress. You might need her, especially since one of your other coworkers is so compromised.”

“You mean the monster you hired? You put her in that office with us.”

“Yes. Well. We all make mistakes.”

“A _mistake_? A mistake is… is buying the wrong kind of printer ink, not – ”

“Either way, there’s very little I can do about it now. You know I can’t fire her.”

“You could deal with her in other ways.”

Elias looked surprised. “I didn’t expect you of all people to suggest I kill employees who happen to be inconvenient.”

“No, I… I didn’t mean…”

“You didn’t mean it, or you just didn’t want to be the one to say it?”

“Doesn’t it bother you? Her presence here?”

“Of course. That’s why I hired you some extra help. Although frankly, I’m a lot more worried about our missing Archivist. He has a limited amount of time to grow in power if he wants any chance of stopping the Unknowing, and we can’t really afford the delay of a kidnapping right now.”

“Yes, that’s clearly the biggest concern with Jon’s situation right now.”

Elias shot him a sharp look, and Martin remembered the look on Tim’s face when he’d stumbled back into the archives after Elias’ demonstration of what he could do. Martin reminded himself to be careful.

“We’re trying to find Jon, but we don’t have much information. How did you know who had him?”

“I saw the abduction take place.”

“You were spying on him?”

“No more than you have. But I saw him at the time, yes. Those two couriers took him, said they had to deliver him to Nikola, and threw him in their van, which I do not have the ability to track with any accuracy. I lost sight of him fairly quickly, and wherever they have him now is also shielded from the Eye. I know, I suspect, less than you do about the situation right now, despite my gifts.”

Martin filed all that away under Useful Information About Elias’ Powers,  and nodded. “And that’s all you know?”

“I know he is still alive, but I believe you have that knowledge already.”

“I want to hire a private investigator to help look.” He handed Elias Basira’s business card.

“Hmm. Yes, that’s probably a good career move for her. Send through the contract and all that. Anything else I can help you with, Martin?”

“… I think that’s everything. Thanks.”

“Best of luck.”

Even before he’d known about the Eye, Martin had always felt like he’d narrowly escaped some disaster whenever he left Elias’ office, no matter how cordial the interaction.  That feeling was even worse, now that he knew what Elias could do.  Oh yeah, and the fact that Elias had killed Jon’s predecessor. That didn’t help.

‘I didn’t expect you of all people to suggest I kill employees when they become inconvenient,’ like he didn’t shoot Gertrude. Which nobody seemed all that worried about. Well, Martin supposed they were probably safe from Elias so long as nobody tried to destroy the archive, which just left… the entire rest of the universe to be afraid of, he supposed.

He should’ve taken that job at Nando’s instead.

\----------------------

  
  


Sasha tried not to think too hard about how she and Mary had ended up in the same coffee shop where she’d met Michael, and prepared to have what would probably be the most awkward conversation of her life.

“Elias hired a new archival assistant today,” she said conversationally.

“Oh, really? Anyone I know?”

“Melanie King. She’s a ghost hunter. I mean, she used to find ghosts and film them,” Sasha clarified, realising how easy ‘ghost hunter’ could be misinterpreted. “So she’s had some experience with the supernatural.”

“That’s good. We’re going to run out of room in the archives if Elias keeps hiring more people, though.”

“Perfect chance to petition for more space.” Their coffees arrived, and Sasha waited for the server to move back out of earshot before leaning forward. “I’m hoping we can be good friends with Melanie. It’s good to have a lot of friends, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely. This is the most interesting group of friends I’ve ever been a part of!”

Sasha tried not to think too hard about the implications of that. “Your other… friends, before you came here. You lived with them in college, you said.”

“Yes.”

Sasha had read Lionel Elliott’s statement. “They weren’t like us, were they? The other archival assistants, I mean.”

“No, They were more… predictable. We were all studying very hard.”

“They were like you.”

“Yes.”

Sasha steeled herself. Martin had said that Mary had been open when he’d confronted her, but there was always the chance she’d react poorly. “You’re not human, right?”

And Mary shook her head. Just like that. “I’m trying. But there’s so much to remember.”

“Yes, we’re very complicated. Here’s the thing, Mary. With Melanie, we don’t… we don’t know her well, yet, and she might have trouble adjusting to working in the archives. We don’t know how she’s going to react to anything. It will be a lot safer and easier if she thinks you’re human. Your imitating is good,” she lied quickly, “but maybe don’t… tell her the truth, if she does suspect something?”

“You want me to lie to her?” Mary frowned. “Isn’t she going to be our friend? Friends are supposed to be honest, right?”

“Well, yes. When they can. But…” Sasha briefly considered the implications of this conversation. She definitely didn’t want Mary to think it was okay to deceive friends; it would make her far more dangerous to have around. She couldn’t ignore the fact that the last time Mary had decided to deceive her, it’d been to trick her into destroying the table, and she and Martin had nearly died. Avoiding any more little issues like that would be best for everyone. 

Time for a different tactic.

“You’re trying to be like a human, right? Trying to blend in?”

Mary nodded.

“Well, why don’t we have a little game? Let’s see how good you are at being human, by seeing how long we can go without making Melanie suspicious. The rules are that you can’t lie to her – that way, you have to be careful to blend in really well, so she doesn’t ask. Tim and Martin and Jon and I will support you.” _And lie to Melanie when you’re not listening_ , Sasha added to herself. “It’ll be a real challenge, to see how much you’ve learned.”

“A game? I do like games. Normally they’re the opposite, though.”

“Normally you play to scare people?”

“Yeah.”

“So this will be something new and exciting. You can really test your skills. Maybe learn something new.”

Mary considered this for several seconds. Then, finally, she nodded. “Yes. This sounds like fun.”

“Great!” Sasha sipped her latte. Mary picked up hers and took a big gulp; Sasha put a gentle hand on her arm. “Hang on. There’s a tell right there, see? That’s one of the first strange things we noticed about you. You drink hot drinks as if they’re not hot. Doesn’t that hurt?”

“I can feel pain,” Mary said, somewhat defensively. “I know how the nerves work.”

“Right. Well. Humans generally try to feel as little pain as possible. So when you have a very hot drink, pay attention to whether it hurts to drink it, and drink it in ways that don’t hurt. Wait for it to cool a little, and just sip it.” Sasha demonstrated. “That way you look more human.”

“But Tim doesn’t feel as little pain as possible. He eats painful food all the time, and he exercises until his muscles hurt.”

“Okay, yes. Um…” Sasha hesitated, gathered her thoughts, tried to think about how to explain things like having a taste for hot food, or enduring a painful workout to become stronger.

This was going to be a lot more complicated than she’d thought.

\---------------------

  
  


Tim looked up from the files he was perusing at the woman entering the archives. She was familiar, of course, from the internet.

“Hi. I’m Melanie. I work here now?”

“I know who you are,” Tim said, looking back at his work.

“Right. You must be Tim?”

“Mm-hmm.”

After several seconds, she said in a much angrier tone, “You know, I’m starting to get the impression that none of you want me here.”

“We don’t,” Tim said bluntly. “I don’t think anyone should be here. It’s not your fault; he should’ve tried harder to warn you. But I guess it doesn’t matter now, does it? You’re stuck here. With us. Might as well settle in.”

“Is this the whole ‘you can’t quit’ thing?”

“Mm-hmm. Have you tried?”

“No, and I’m not going to. If you don’t want me around, well, that’s your problem.”

“Try. Maybe you still can. Maybe it takes a while to take hold. I don’t know. But if you can get out, do it.”

Melanie crossed her arms. “I’m not going anywhere. I need a job, and it’s fine here.”

Tim snorted. “Right, because you haven’t been eaten by worms yet.”

“… What?”

He gestured at the scars on his face and neck. “That’s how I got these. Flesh-eating worms. Jon’s got ‘em, too. Martin and Sasha nearly got killed by a table monster and then got trapped in nightmare corridors.”

“Yeah, well, I got shot by a ghost out there. Bad stuff happens everywhere.”

“Shot by a ghost? Really?”

Melanie shrugged. “I know you want to hype up the drama of a filing job here, but you’re not going to scare me off. I’m here now. Deal with it.”

Tim shrugged. “Think what you want. When we rescue Jon, he can clarify everything with his spooky nightmare powers. Get everyone on the same page.”

“His spooky nightmare – what do you mean, rescue Jon?”

“Oh, Martin didn’t tell you? He’s been kidnapped by a monster circus.”

“… What?”

“They’re trying to start the apocalypse, and we think they need his skin, for some reason? I don’t know the details.”

“Are you having me on?”

“Nope.”

“Hmph. _Sure_ you aren’t.” She stalked off, leaving Tim in peace to continue his research. Which wasn’t as apocalypse-based as some of his colleagues might have hoped.

He was using the time alone to try to figure out where Gertrude might have hidden Jude’s artefact. 

When he was sure everyone was gone, he headed for Jon’s office. He had no real hope that anything important in there would still be where Gertrude had left it. Jon had used the office for months, a significant portion of the wall had been replaced after the Prentiss attack and the whole place had been thoroughly cleaned of worms. But there were still boxes in the corner where random files and trinkets that Jon hadn’t known what to do with yet had been tossed, so that was a good place to start looking.

If he was lucky, he’d be able to pay one monster to kill another, and things would get a lot less complicated.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin plans, Tim takes action.

Martin, to his own great embarrassment, had caved to the trope. Like some conspiracy theorist from a bad movie, he’d bought a giant corkboard, pinned various notes to it, and was in the process of linking them together with string.

He’d had no choice. He needed to be able to look into the Unknowing in a Mary-free environment, and he couldn’t access the growing electronic archive database from home. Anyway, he felt better having things laid out in a physical chart that he could alter. It was easier to follow the strands of influence that way. Although he was quickly realising that he was going to need a second corkboard.

The Unknowing. At least two previous attempts, both interrupted, causing delays. Gertrude had suggested that the whole system would be vulnerable if the Unknowing was actually underway before it was destroyed, ending the attempt for however many hundreds of years it would take to build up power again. Martin wasn’t sure how she’d reached that conclusion, or how building up fear power worked exactly, but they didn’t have time to develop a full understanding of the metaphysics before saving the world. She seemed to know a lot more than they did, and that was going to have to be good enough.

A monster who lured people into alleys and stole their skin. An evil taxidermy shop that, if Martin was interpreting the statement correctly, was run by someone wearing a skin the monster had stolen? And Melanie’s statement had mentioned one of the monster victims too, stapling her own skin back on. An evil circus to conduct the ritual, a dancer who needed a skin of great power and had, for some reason, chosen Jon’s.

Except for the rather worrying implication about how powerful Jon must be, Martin had no idea what to do with any of that.

Rescuing Jon would help, of course, but he was sure they could find another skin – the previous attempts hadn’t mentioned anything about anyone in an Archivist’s skin in particular (although he supposed the statement givers probably wouldn’t know).  Elias seemed to think that their only chance of success relied in Jon being powerful enough to save them, but since Jon’s abilities seemed to stretch to ‘make people honest and chatty’, Martin didn’t see how this was going to help. What was he going to do, get the dancer too wrapped up in a Big Villain Monologue to dance? Maybe they could figure it out when they had Jon back.

M aybe Elias just meant that Jon needed to be powerful enough to ask the right questions, get the right information to stop it? That couldn’t be it, or Elias could’ve simply told them the information.

Martin picked up a notecard to write “Elias” on, dropped the notecard, and cursed. No one at work seemed to have noticed that he’d been fumbling things all day, but unless he was a lot more careful, someone was going to notice eventually. He kept forgetting about the damn fingers.

As he thought about them, he opened his left hand and rubbed the last two fingers. They felt things just fine; touch, heat, pain,  all the normal sensations . They just didn’t  _move_ . Well, sometimes they did, a little. But then they’d be paralysed again, just two unresponsive stalks of bone and skin on his hand, and he’d drop something. At first, he’d thought that maybe Mary had damaged something when she’d been poking around, but that couldn’t be right; she’d only inspected his right hand. He’d booked a doctor’s appointment, but he already suspected that they weren’t going to find anything.

The paralysis didn’t make sense to Martin. Mary had told him that there weren’t any muscles in the fingers, just tendons; little internal puppet strings to pull the bones into the right alignment, controlled by more distant agents in the hand and wrist. That meant that the paralysis had to be in the hand or wrist, but surely that meant that other hand movements should be affected? So far as he could tell, it was just those two fingers. Like the tendons within had stopped puppetting  them  like they were supposed to.

If it got any worse, he’d bring it up with the others. But for now, they didn’t need silly distractions. They needed to focus on saving Jon, and saving the world.

\--- \-------------------

Melanie walked in to the archives on her second day to see Sasha, whom she’d already been introduced to, and the assistant she’d talked to about Jon when she was hired, who she hadn’t. The young woman looked up from her typing to give Melanie a broad, welcoming smile. “Hi! You’re Melanie.”

“Um… yes.”

“I am Mary.” She got up and offered Melanie her hand. “Welcome to the archives.”

 _Well, at least_ someone _around here doesn’t hate me being here_ , Melanie thought as she shook her hand. It had been hard enough, years ago, fighting and clawing together enough respect and interest to get Ghost Hunt UK off the ground; she’d not been looking forward to having to claw herself a new space in another career. “Um, thanks.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Mary asked. “Martin usually likes to make tea, but he’s off interviewing somebody with Tim.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“Great!” Mary shot her another bright smile and returned to work, apparently deciding the conversation was over. Melanie tried to ignore how carefully Sasha was watching the pair of them while she pretended to be staring at her phone. Her flip phone. What was there to stare at on a flip phone? Especially when Melanie could see a perfectly good, new-looking smartphone sitting on top of Sasha’s computer tower. A work phone/personal phone deal, probably, but a _flip phone_?

Melanie decided that she probably didn’t want to know, and got to work. Her task was quite simple: she had a box of what the others worrying referred to as “real statements” whose audio versions had already been recorded, and her job was to type them up for the electronic database. She didn’t understand the notation and filing systems yet (what the fuck did ‘suspected Flesh’ mean??), but she’d been assured that it was fine to leave those alone for now; someone else would come through to do that. She just had to do the boring grunt work.

After her recent experiences with war ghosts, she was happy for a little boring grunt work. At least she wasn’t likely to get shot here.

About a third of the way through a report on someone hiding from a monster under a blanket, she found herself murmuring the words aloud as she typed them. Suddenly, Sasha was at her shoulder, blocking the computer screen with one hand and offering her a piece of gum with the other.

“You should take a bit of a break,” she advised.

“I’ve only been working for like five minutes,” Melanie replied, puzzled.

“Yeah, but… okay, there’s no way for me to explain this that sounds… sane, but you don’t want to _read_ the statements. Once you start saying them aloud, it’s time to walk away while you still can, because if you get caught up you’re going to tire yourself out really fast. We already have audio of these ones; there’s no need to put yourself through that.”

“What are you talking about?”

Sasha rubbed her eyes. “Look, this place is super weird, okay? It has a lot of little quirks, and a lot of them suck. The statements won’t hurt you, exactly, but they can be pretty rough and they’ll tire you out. Trust me; it’s best to be as… distant… as possible when you’re interacting with them.”

“Interacting with them? They’re words on paper.”

“It’s hard to explain. But trust me. When you find yourself murmuring along out loud, stop while you still can.” She proffered the gum again. Melanie, warily, took a piece.

“Chewing on something helps,” Sasha continued. “Sorry to be all weird and vague, but it’s… really complicated.”

“Uh… right.” _Okay, so the only vaguely normal person in this office is Mary. Got it_. Melanie glanced at Mary, who was typing away at an impressive speed on her own computer. She couldn’t help but notice that Mary was typing from a red-stickered box of ‘real statements’ as well and didn’t seem to be having any problems or showing any concern whatsoever over whatever Sasha meant by ‘ _reading_ the statements’.

Melanie returned to her own typing, careful to keep quiet this time, lest she avoid worrying Sasha further. She’d thought she’d left Really Weird Coworkers behind when Ghost Hunt UK had fallen through, but apparently now. Ah well, at least archiving work promised to be safe and peaceful.

\---------------------

  
  


“Shitshitshit!”

“Down here!”

“Why are there locusts? The locusts are in the middle of a dormant cycle right – ”

“Yeah Martin, that’s the one weird thing about this basement! The locust dormant cycle! Got a lighter?”

“Here.”

“Protect your face.”

\----------------------

  
  


“It’s Corruption,” Tim said grimly, stomping into the archives behind Martin. “I’m going to lunch.”

“I like your gloves, Martin!” Mary piped up brightly.

“Since when do you wear gloves?” Sasha asked.

Martin flushed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “London is cold!”

“Okay, okay… it was just a question. Oh, Tim; if you’re going through the break room, can you test the sound of the microwave on the JonPhone? It’s not the sound of a PC tower.”

“Sorry, I’m going out.”

“No problem; I’ll test it later.”

“Why would a microwave be active near him for hours at a time?” Martin wondered.

Tim ignored the speculation. The others seemed to have finding Monsterboss well in hand, and anyway, they still had nearly three months to do that. He wanted to address the more pressing issue, and searching Jon’s office had turned up nothing.

Breaking into Gertrude’s apartment wasn’t hard. Judging by the state of the window, he wasn’t even the first person to do so. Two things really bothered him about the situation though; the first was, despite the fact that someone else seemed to have broken in before him, the place wasn’t ransacked.

The second was that it was still Gertrude’s apartment.

Her body had shown up ages ago, but the place was still full of old lady stuff, covered in dust and cobwebs. Why hadn’t the place been re-let? Why hadn’t this stuff made its way into the hands of relatives or, if she didn’t have any, at least been auctioned off? Old mail sat on the kitchen counter, addressed to Gertrude; a dirty tea mug sat in the sink, mould growing in the bottom. Like she’d left, been shot, and this place had just been… left how it was. Why hadn’t the landlord stepped in? Was something supernatural happening here, or was it simply a matter of a woman who paid her rent well in advance and a landlord who didn’t pay attention? Maybe Gertrude owned the flat, and when she’d died, there was no one close to her to notice. No one to handle her affairs.

Tim pulled a book of her bookshelf and was momentarily taken aback by the cover, where the model’s eyes had been carefully removed. A couple of months ago, that would have creeped him out to no end, but he understood the logic, now. Someone in her position probably had enough of being looked at at work, without having to see fake people doing it too. He’d listened to a lot of Gertrude’s tapes, read a lot of her files, trying to figure out where he might find payment for Jude, but she was a hard person to get to know much about, beyond being cold and practical. Tim wasn’t sure if that dispassionate ruthlessness was her, or her position. If that might happen to Jon, too.

Well, who’d be able to tell the difference? He was already such a self-centred arsehole.

But Tim wasn’t there to speculate on human nature. He was there to do a job.

So he started to search.


	32. Chapter 32

Watching Mary have lunch was an adventure in itself. Melanie watched her retrieve about thirty tiny containers from a large bag, each with about a spoonful of a different kind of food in it, then slowly open and eat them one by one, chewing thoughtfully each time.

“Um… what are you doing?” Melanie couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh! I’m trying to decide which foods I like.”

“You don’t know which foods you like?”

Mary laughed. “What kind of adult woman doesn’t know what foods she likes? When she’s had so many years to learn? But taste buds change over time. Maybe I’m missing out on something delicious.”

“I hear that. I used to love bananas as a kid. Now? I hate them.”

“I saw somebody on the internet putting bananas into a cake yesterday. Cake is nice!”

“Yeah, I guess. Hey, Mary, have you noticed that the people around here are a bit weird?”

“What did I do that’s weird?” she asked, sounding panicked.

“Nothing,” Melanie lied, looking at the tiny food containers littered about. “It’s just… the others seem to hate it here, and hate me being here. Well, Tim and Martin do, anyway; Sasha hasn’t said much. Do they do that to you, too? Do they have some kind of like, boy’s club thing going on?”

“Everyone’s been my friend,” Mary shrugged. “I think they’re just easily frightened.”

“Explains why they’re working in a basement full of paper instead of out there doing proper ghost hunting, I guess.”

“Yes, the Watcher’s servants do seem to go for the easy pickings,” Mary said in a judgemental tone.

“The who?” Melanie asked, but was interrupted by Martin bursting into the room.

“Melanie, there you are! Talking to Mary! Alone!”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, no! I’m glad you’re making friends with everyone. It’s good to have a lot of friends, isn’t it, Mary?”

Mary nodded solemnly, chasing a mouthful of vanilla custard with a mouthful of spicy curry.

“… Right.” Melanie glanced between the two, and slowly backed toward the door. “I’m gonna buy lunch, I think.”

“Have fun!” Martin called after her as she shut the door behind her.

Maybe she had been a bit hasty in getting a job here…

\----------------

  
  


Mary finished had up her lunch and left by the time Martin had made his tea. The process was slowed down by him having to do it one-handed. Three of the fingers on his left hand were paralysed today, and he didn’t want to drop anything.

He knew he should be worried. Paralysis was a big deal, and paralysis that was advancing, paralysing more things, was a massive one. He should probably cancel his appointment for next week and just go to the ER immediately. _His fingers were paralysed_.

He should be worried about that.

And he was. He was. But he’d also noticed the inconsistency of the condition. That morning, as he’d carefully analysed his corkboard and looped strong around thumbtacks to connect his notes, he’s had full control of all of his fingers but one. Now, he was down three – no, two again. Life had returned to one of them while he stirred his tea.

He has to know why.

Telling the others at this stage would be a bad idea. Not only would it distract them from the other missions and muddy the waters, make the group dynamics harder to track, but their speculations and interference would make it harder for him to figure out what was going on. These were answers that he could find, he was sure of it. There was no need to complicate the matter.

He at least needed to keep it to himself until they found Jon. Nothing was more important than finding Jon.

“Hey,” Sasha said, entering the room behind him and making him jump.

“Oh. Hi there. How are things going?”

“Well, y’know.” She put the duplicate of Jon’s phone on top of the microwave before sticking her soup inside. “Found a little snag in our Mary-Melanie dance.”

“Mmm?”

“Yeah. If we don’t want Mary to know we’re opposing the Unknowing, but we do want Melanie’s help, and we don’t want Melanie to know about Mary, how exactly are we supposed to convince Melanie not to say anything to Mary about it?”

“Good question. When Melanie’s more on board with the whole evil clown thing, that’s definitely going to come up.” He glanced at the phone. “You know, somehow I doubt they’re running a kitchen microwave near Jon.”

“Best to try everything.”

“I guess, but you’ve got hours of static. What are people microwaving for hours? And why would they turn the microwave off to taunt their prisoner? They only talk when it’s clear.”

“Or, they talk a lot, and we only pick up clips from when it’s clear because the voices are lost in the static otherwise.”

“Yeah, maybe. But then that’s – oh. Hang on a minute. Sasha…”

“Mmm?”

“They took him off in that Breekon & Hope van, right? And Elias lost track of them, so we don’t know where they took him to.”

“Right.”

“And now he’s near something that periodically makes noise and/or moves for hours, but stops sometimes. And they only talk to him when it’s not making noise. That is, it stops whenever someone’s with him.”

“A logical deduction.”

Martin picked up the microphone. “How do you think the gyroscope in this thing would interpret being in a moving delivery van?”

Sasha’s eyes widened. “You think he’s still in the van?”

“Why not? It makes sense, based on what we know, right?”

Sasha snatched the phone out of his hand. “I’m going to go find someone who has a van to test this. You call your detective.”

“Private investigator.”

“Whatever.”

\------------------

  
  


“Hi, Daisy.”

“Basira. What’s up?”

“I… I need a favour.”

“Yeah, I figured that’d be the case. What do you need?”

“I’m working an a, a kidnapping case. A weird kidnapping case.”

“And they went to a PI instead of the cops?”

“It’s complicated. I need to find a vehicle that we think the kidnappers are using. It’s um, it’s a white delivery van. The company’s defunct so I can’t find any there. I was hoping you could get your guys to track it for me, but it’s… well, it’s an odd one, like I said.”

“…”

“Daisy?”

“Breekon and Hope?”

“What?”

“The company. Was it called Breekon and Hope?”

“Uh, yeah. How did you – ?”

“I’ll look into it. Basira, if you find the van, don’t approach it alone, okay? Call me.”

“I will, but what’s – Daisy? Daisy?”

\-------------------

  
  


A lunch break wasn’t long enough for a thorough search of Gertrude’s apartment. Tim decided that what he was looking for would either be hidden or it wouldn’t, and Gertrude hadn’t been the kind of person to go halfway, so after finding nothing in the obvious places – jewellery box, bedside cabinet, that sort of thing – he went straight for the most obscure hiding spots he could think of. The only interesting thing he found was a small box in the vent in Gertrude’s bedroom.

The box contained a cassette tape, a USB drive, and a small book. Only after carefully checking for a Jurgen Leitner bookplate did Tim peek inside.

It was a photo album. The first page contained, of all things, two photos of Elias, with the handwritten label ELIAS BOUCHARD. Both were candid photos, apparently taken without his knowledge. The next page had two photos of the front desk lady, ROSALIE DAWKINS.

He flipped through the album. The entire thing was like that; candid photos of people inside the Magnus Institute, presumably all employees (the handful he recognised, including Sasha, were definitely employees), all clearly showing their faces and most of them taken without the subject seeming to be aware of the camera. In each case, one photo was an old polaroid, the other a printout presumably taken on a digital camera. Why had Gertrude made this? Why hide it in a vent? Had she gone off the deep end like Jon, gone paranoid and started stalking her coworkers?

No; it was too many people, and only two photos of each, generally not doing anything interesting. Tim pocketed everything.

There was nothing else in the box. Dammit.

Tim’s lunch break was almost over. He should get back to the office. He didn’t want to make a habit of being consistently late. He didn’t think Elias would care about such a thing, but… well.

Best not to risk it.

\---------------------

  
  


Martin looked thoughtfully at his hands, bending the fingers of his left hand with his right, and idly wondered if what he was about to do was very stupid.

Probably. But it had felt like the right thing to do, as soon as he had thought of it. He knocked on the IT office door.

“Come in!”

There were generally five people in the office. Only Colin was there when Martin entered, which suited him just fine. He looked up from behind a desk festooned with lego robots. “Oh, Martin! Long time no see! Computer trouble?”

“No.” Martin glanced around the office. “Everyone off helping people?”

“Yeah, we’re a little slammed. Clark hasn’t been in for awhile – you know Clark?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty new. Barely finished training the guy and he just stopped showing up for work. The rest of us have been scrambling to cover which at least means there’s more space in the office at any given time. How can I help you?”

Martin hesitated. “You know about, um… robots, right? So you can do pulleys and… and things that move?”

“That’s a vague question. I mostly do lego comps these days, but I’ve been known to dabble. If you’re looking for a drone or something that’s not really my area.”

“No, no. But I do need someone to build me… something. Do you sell custom work?”

“Depends on the job. What do you need?”

“Well, uh… it’s kind of a secret, alright? I don’t want other people knowing about it right now.”

“I don’t do sex toys,” Colin said immediately. “Way too many things that can go wrong, too many ways people can get badly hurt.”

“What? No! No, nothing like… no! It’s just, uh… don’t tell anyone, alright?”

“Okay. What do you need?”

Martin pulled off his left glove. “These fingers aren’t working properly. I’m sure the doctors will have a solution, but in the meantime I’m hoping… is there a way to make something that can, you know, move them?”

“You want me to build you a prosthetic?”

“Yes! Just, you know. So I can hold things, and type.”

“Can I see?”

Martin offered him his hand. Colin inspected the fingers. “Mmm. I don’t know much about hands. Can I get you something that can help you type with these fingers? No. That’s a pipe dream, unless you’re going to a proper roboticist with a lot of money. Can I get them to open and close so you can hold stuff? Maybe. But Martin, a doctor really should – ”

“Already booked.”

“Right. And why is this secret, exactly?”

“It’s… complicated.”

“And not my business, I guess. But the secrecy’s going to be a problem, because it means you’re going to want something you can fit in a bulky glove, right?”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Leverage. You’d want the pulleys to be up quite high from the knuckles. Having them lay low enough to fit in a glove is… I don’t think it’s going to work. But I’ll look into it.”

“But the tendons are inside the fingers, and they have plenty of leverage.”

“Inside the fingers is different. Although I’m very interested in trying this now. Could be a good intellectual exercise; just… don’t expect too much.”

“Right. Well, thanks. Let me know about cost and all that.”

“I’ll let you know when I have a better idea of how the hell to accomplish this. That all you need?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Good luck with the IT workload.”

“Good luck with sorting paper.”

“Yeah, you know archive work,” Martin muttered as he left. “Just safe, routine sorting paper.”

  
  



	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary eats ice cream.

“I really don’t see why this is necessary,” Elias’ voice said. “I hardly think I’m in danger of – ”

“Just for my own piece of mind, then, Elias,” Gertrude said.

“Fine. This is Elias Bouchard, head of the Magnus Institute. Is that enough?”

“Plenty, thank you, Elias.”

A pause. The tape recorder was switched on again, in a new environment.

“Go ahead,” Gertrude said.

A sigh. “I’m Rosie.”

“Full name, please.”

“Rosalie Dawkins.”

“Thank you, Rosie.”

The whole tape was like that. Only about twenty voices were on the tape, unlike the fifty or so pages in the photo album. Apart from a couple of timing delays where the recording had started or stopped a few moments out of sync, the audio on the thumb drive was the same; two recordings of the same events. Tim couldn’t figure out the point of it. Two pictures of each person’s face, two recordings of each person’s voice, for… redundancy?

Did Gertrude have memory problems, perhaps? That’d be ironic, for a servant of the Beholding. She was pretty old, though. Maybe it was her defense against Alzheimer’s, though he was pretty sure Alzheimer’s didn’t work that way. Even if it did, why would memorising everyone who worked in her building be her priority of what knowledge to try to preserve?

Maybe some monster had cursed her with… something. Some kind of Lonely thing, perhaps, that attacked memories of people close to her? But fifty or so Institute staff still seemed like a weird target for that, and she hadn’t recorded any precious memories or even any details on who they were. No, it had to be for something else.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t relevant to his mission. He the tape and USB in his desk drawer, along with the creepy photo album. If it was about something important, whatever it was would probably try to kill them eventually, and they could deal with it then.

Tim looked up as Martin shuffled in, hands in his pockets.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Martin said. “I’m going to record a statement. I’ll be in Jon’s office.”

“Didn’t Sasha do one yesterday?”

Martin scowled. “Elias says there’s a ‘shortfall’, with Jon indisposed. I asked what that meant but he gave one of those explanations he likes that don’t explain anything.”

“So he’s making you do it?”

“He didn’t specifically tell me to, but I’m pretty sure if it doesn’t get done, he’ll ask Melanie, and she’s still adjusting.”

“You can’t protect her forever.”

“No one can protect anyone forever. That’s no reason not to protect who we can.”

“Mmhmm.”

Sasha walked in and waved the duplicate Jon phone triumphantly. “We have a match! By which I mean, being in a moving vehicle is one of like five things I’ve tested so far that might be the sound we’re getting. It’s kind of hard to match random humming and static with anything for certain.”

“That’s great!” Martin said. “By the way, we might want to take Mary off digitising the statements for awhile.”

“What? But she’s so good at it!”

“I know; that’s the problem. Melanie’s noticed how difficult it is not to, you know, get absorbed, and she’s been asking Mary how she can do it so fast without any problems. If we don’t want her to get suspicious…”

Sasha sighed. “Good point. But it is massively useful to have someone who can’t ‘read’ the statements doing it. Taking Mary off digitising duty is going to slow us down a lot.”

“Oh noooo,” Tim piped up sarcastically. “The evil organisation will have sloppier records. How terrible. I don’t see why we’re updating any of this at all. Gertrude had the right idea, half-arsing it.”

“If we’re going to save the world, I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we had as much well-organised information as possible to plan with,” Sasha said.

“Okay, fair.” And Tim had to admit, the database had been very useful in his side projects. He’d know a lot less about Gertrude, or Jude, or monsters in general without it.

“So far as saving the world goes,” Martin said, “do we, um, have a plan for that? I know we need to find the ritual and do… something… when it starts, but… what, exactly?”

“Well, we have two axes,” Tim said.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to do all that much. Hey, where are Mary and Melanie?”

“Melanie’s in the library, Mary’s at lunch.”

“Oh. Good.”

\--------------

  
  


Melanie wasn’t an idiot. She knew when she was being handled.

It had taken about three days of working in the archives to get a feel for the scope of what they were dealing with. Poking around the growing archival database had revealed pretty quickly that the whole evil circus thing was real, and part of a bigger picture, and that them trying to summon the apocalypse wasn’t one hundred per cent out of the realm of possibility.

She’d looked at some of the statements, too, from the red-marked ‘real’ boxes and compared them to the blue ‘junk’ boxes. She’d developed a pretty good sense of telling real from fake ghost stories already, or at least what the tellers believed were real, and the archive team’s sorting matched up roughly with how she would’ve done it; she would’ve sorted a handful differently, but nobody could agree completely on such things. When she’d asked Sasha how they determined real from fake, she showed her, using a laptop microphone and a tape recorder.

Melanie remembered arguing with Jon about recording her own statement on tape, when the laptop software had failed to record it properly. She also knew she’d recorded the story for herself, at home, in the hopes of maybe making an episode of Ghost Hunt UK with it, and it had recorded to laptop fine. She wondered if she’d have gotten different results if she’d recorded it at the Institute, or – judging from some of the other statements – just with the intention of telling it to the Institute.

Yesterday, she’d summoned up the courage to type up a resignation letter. Just to see. It had been hard to type; her fingers kept slipping to the wrong keys, and when she was finally done, she just couldn’t bring herself to hit ‘print’.

That was a problem. Melanie might have needed a job, but she had no intention of being trapped. Still, it confirmed that the others were being honest with her. Mostly. There was one thing that everyone was very careful to keep away from her, lead her around, hide from her.

Any time she found herself alone with Mary, somebody would swoop in within moments and interfere.

They probably thought they were being subtle, just happening to come in right then, just happening to have something else that either she or Mary needed to do. But they were so open with everything else, no matter how unbelievable it sounded, so why were they keeping her away from Mary?

Melanie wasn’t an idiot. She knew when she was being handled. And she didn’t like it.

Which is why she’d slipped away to the library and waited until Mary’s lunch break (Mary was unfailingly punctual), made sure Mary was alone, and followed her to the ice cream shop where Mary had spent the last couple of days’ lunches steadily tasting her way through all the flavours. As she watched, Mary took a big spoonful of Rum and Raisin, considered it for a few seconds, and screwed up her face in pain.

“Hey,” Melanie said, approaching.

“Hello, Melanie! Would you like some ice cream?”

“No, thanks. So, you like ice cream?”

“Yes. Not this one, though,” she added, scowling at the cup before taking another giant spoonful. “I watched Ghost Hunt UK.”

“Oh, which episode?”

“All of them. Over the past couple of days.”

Melanie stared. “Did you _sleep_?”

“Oh, I’m not tired. When necessary, humans can go many days without sleep before non-mental critical systems begin to fail,” she said, as if quoting from a textbook.

"What about critical mental systems?"

"They recover with sleep unless missing sleep is a regular occurence." She smiled brightly. “I am fine. I went longer without sleep in college.”

“Ha, right. That’s college, isn’t it.”

“It is,” Mary said solemnly.

“So, um… what did you think? Of Ghost Hunt UK?”

“I liked the one with the cave ghost the most. At the beach?”

“Oh, yeah. That was hell to film. We had to do three takes on approaching the cave because the sunlight was being a bitch, and that meant we had to rake our own footprints out of the sand between approaches, it took like an hour just to get into the cave. Worth it, though. That episode did really well. Richard reckons he managed to see the ghost, though we didn’t get it on camera.”

“Wow, really? I’ve never seen a ghost.”

“You haven’t? Really? The way the others talk, we should be expecting supernatural nonsense any moment!”

“Well, we had an invasion of flesh-eating worms who tried to dig a fear portal in our secret tunnel network and start the apocalypse. But that’s not as cool as ghosts.”

“Fear portal? What secret tunnel – no, I’m sure I’ll find out if it’s important. I’m gonna have to take you ghost hunting sometime. Y’know, if the Institute lets us get away for long enough. Tim says we can’t just leave.”

“He had several days away from the Institute before he got sick. Or we could just wait for our holidays.”

“Or I could just fucking kill Elias. Reckon that would work?”

Mary laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think Tim tried that one.”

“Then it’s set. I kill Elias, he becomes a ghost, you can see him, and we don’t even have to leave the building to do it. We put the video up on youtube, it goes viral, you join the Ghost Hunt UK team, we leave the institute behind and become wildly successful. A perfect plan with no holes, and everyone wins.”

“Except Elias.”

“Yeah, but who cares about him? Say, what did you do before joining the Institute?”

“I studied anatomy in college.”

“Ooh, you’re a biologist?”

“I’m an archival assistant.”

“Yeah, the job market’s a bit like that these days, isn’t it? But you must have, like… been into the supernatural, right? To end up at the Institute? I don’t think I know any scientists who are into the supernatural.”

“A lot of the statements in the archives take place in laboratories, or are investigated by scientists who then give statements.”

“That happen to you?”

“No. I just applied for a job.”

“But you must have had some supernatural encounter or something, right? Or did you just wake up one day and decide you were interested in the supernatural?”

“Both.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“… Right. Sorry.”

But Mary didn’t look bothered by her prying. She just shot her another bright smile. “I am getting more ice cream. Would you like some?”

“Still no, thanks.” Melanie watched her head up to the counter. Aside from not wanting to randomly share details about scary encounters with someone who was practically a stranger, Mary didn’t seem to be hiding anything.

Why didn’t the others want Melanie talking to her?


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin goes to the doctor, Daisy goes with Basira.

“And they don’t move at all, you say?” the doctor asked, examining Martin’s fingers.

“Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t,” Martin said with a shrug. “I haven’t seen any pattern to it.”

“Hmm. Only the fingers? No other paralysis? Other symptoms?”

“I don’t… I don’t think so.”

“Alright. Well, I’ll arrange for some tests for you, and prescribe you some anti-inflammatories in the meantime. The most likely cause is inflammation around the tendons, which could be related to allergies, any number of chronic conditions, or a simple injury. Did you strain your hand recently?”

Martin almost started sobbing with relief. “Inflammation? Seriously? It’s just some swelling?”

“Potentially. The tests will tell us if it’s anything more serious. I’ll write you a doctor’s note for your employer; you really need some time off work to rest the hand if you want it to heal.”

Martin had absolutely no intention of taking time off work. “It’ll heal?”

“Probably. Unless it won’t. If it’s a chronic condition, or the tests bring back something else… wait a minute, what’s this?”

“What?”

The doctor gently moved Martin’s hand under a lamp and turned it on, staring intently at his little finger. After a moment, he opened an alcohol wipe and scrubbed it across Martin’s fingernail, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“Some kind of discolouration I’ve never seen before. Do you work with dyes, food, glues… any kind of chemical that might discolour your nails?”

Martin tried to recall if he’d touched anything weird over the past couple of weeks. “Um, I don’t think so? I touched some old film a while ago that was kind of… vinegary?”

“Yeah, old film does that. Vinegar doesn’t discolour keratin, though. Just let me…” He opened a sterile paper packet and withdrew a tiny set of pointy tweezers. He manoeuvred the tips just under Martin’s little fingernail and carefully withdrew… something. Some kind of stringy silver-white matter. “That’s interesting,” he murmured.

Martin inspected his fingers closely in the bright lamplight. Whatever the doctor had withdrawn was indeed laced under his little fingernail. Well, the feeling of relief had been nice while it lasted.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I suppose we’ll be running a lot more tests.” He took some notes. “My best guess would be some sort of fungal infection. Until we know what it is, it’s hard to know how difficult it will be to treat, but I’m going to put you on a general antifungal treatment while we await results.”

“A fungal infection. That’s a… a normal thing, right? That people get.”

The doctor gave him an odd look. “I suppose so? Hard to say how ‘normal’ it is until the tests come back. In the meantime, keep your hands clean and wear gloves if you touch anything. I’ll write you a script for antifungal cream.”

A fungal infection. God.

Martin hoped he was right.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Over a few days, Tim searched Gertrude’s house top to bottom, and found nothing.

That in itself worried him. Hadn’t she had a whole lot of enemies to protect herself from? He’d expected some kind of defense system or something. Some booby traps, maybe a cursed artefact or two… but aside from the eyeless books and the box in the air vent, the only surprising thing about Gertrude’s apartment was how little she seemed to own.

This had been a fool’s errand, anyway. It was time to explore some options other than Jude Perry.

He flipped through the photo album again, just in case there was some kind of clue, something useful, but there was no reason for there to be. Just pairs of photos of random people, each with a name. About two thirds of the way through the album, he paused, and stared.

What bothered him about the pair of photos wasn’t that they were clearly of different people, unlike the rest of the album – it was pretty easy for photos to get mixed up, and it wasn’t surprising that a couple might have been accidentally swapped. Either the polaroid of the gentle-faced old man with the bad moustache sitting in the archives or the printout of the broader-looking man in front of a familiar natural stone wall was clearly just out of place, and he’d find the twin photo further along in the album.

No, what had caught his attention was the name label: JURGEN LEITNER.

Gertrude had known Leitner? Leitner had been in the archives or, more worryingly, the tunnels beneath the Institute? Gertrude had known Leitner well enough to merit putting him in this album, with her coworkers? That was…

Well, probably not important, in the grand scheme of things. But weird.

\---------------

  
  


Daisy shared one last glance with Basira before getting out of the car.

They’d been tailing the white van for two days. It just drove around, never seeming to need fuel, the drivers never seeming to rest. It stopped about once a day and someone would climb in the back for about fifteen minutes, which gave Daisy hope that their quarry was indeed in there; they were probably feeding him. But Daisy’s experience with this van made her wary about confronting the drivers directly unless she had to, so they’d been biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity.

Finally, they had it. The van had stopped outside a house, and the two delivery men dragged a heavy box out of the back.

Slipping inside before they shut the back door was easy.

Daisy got one glance around the room before the door clanged shut, blocking out all light, but for someone with her experience, it was enough. She saw the old coffin, still sitting on the left side, all wrapped in chains; a couple of large unlabelled wooden crates on the right. She wasn’t opening any boxes in here. Even if Sims was inside a crate, she sure as hell wasn’t opening anything.

But she already knew he wasn’t. From behind the rust-red curtain with the grinning clown face on it that she’d glimpsed up near the front, she could hear faint breathing, smell blood and sweat.

Daisy crept forward and listened, making certain she could hear no one but herself and a single breather behind the curtain. She waited for the van to start moving again before turning on her penlight on the very lowest setting and slipping behind the curtain.

Sims looked… well, not great, but she’d seen kidnapping victims in far worse shape. A couple of bruises on his chest had almost faded away, but the scratches around the ropes tying his ankles to the chair looked fresh, as if he’d been struggling against them recently. His arms were behind his back, where Daisy couldn’t see them, and he was gagged.

He had a sort of desperate-yet-defeated look about him, which was understandable given the circumstances, but he looked more curious than frightened as he squinted his eyes against the faint glow of her light and tried to make out who she was. Daisy knew that most people couldn’t see in as low light as she could, so she turned the light on herself and turned it up enough that he’d see her face as she put a finger to her lips. He nodded.

She wasn’t in uniform for this job, obviously, but Sims seemed to trust her as she slipped behind him to undo the ropes binding his hands. They were marked up, especially the left hand, but aside from the rope burns from his own struggles the marks all looked old, like the little scars that pocked his body. Who the hell was this guy? Wasn’t he supposed to be a librarian, or something?

Once his hands were free, Sims pulled them forward with a groan of pain and started trying to rub some life into them, while Daisy freed his ankles. After a minute, he was able to pull the gag from his mouth.

“Who are you?” he gasped.

“Detective Alice Tonner,” she replied, opening her jacket to reveal her badge. “Call me Daisy. I’ll be your rescuer today. You Jonathan Sims?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you walk?”

“I… I think so.” He got to his feet, wincing.

“Great.” Daisy tossed him his clothes from the cardboard box they’d been sitting in. “Get dressed. We’ve got about ten minutes before everyone’s in position and we can do something stupidly dangerous.”

“Looking forward to it,” Sims said shakily. Daisy moved back into the main part of the van, crouched in a corner where she didn’t have to touch any boxes, and waited.

The coffin was still there. After all these bloody years, the coffin was still there. Sims pushed his way past the curtain and followed her gaze.

“Don’t touch it,” she warned him.

“I’m not stupid,” he said. “Wait, you know about it?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Yes.”

“When? How?”

So she told him. She hadn’t told the story of what happened to Isaac since she’d signed her first Section 31, but the story came easily, the long-forgotten details sharpening anew in her mind as she explained. She wasn’t really one for stories, but hearing it seemed to calm Sims down, somehow, as well as fill in the time while they waited. Maybe he felt safer dealing with a cop who he knew had seen weirder shit before, who he knew wouldn’t freak out at the sight of an evil mannequin or whatever.

Shortly after she finished, she got the warning buzz on her phone.

“Alright,” she said, standing up. “Ready to do something borderline suicidal?”

“Not really, but I’m guessing we don’t have other options, do we.”

“You can stay in the van if you like.”

“ … Let’s do the borderline suicidal thing.”

“Great.” Daisy waited for the van to slow down, then opened the back doors. Below them, the road rushed by impossibly fast. Somewhere behind her, Sims tensed and stepped back. Daisy looked up from the road to Basira, her car swerving all over the road behind them, keeping the other traffic back.

She glanced at Sims. He was small, for a man, which was going to make this a lot easier. She scooped him up in her arms.

“Hey, what are you – ?!”

“Tuck your head in.”

“What?”

“Head down, Sims, unless you want to break your neck.” How had she gotten in this situation? She was a police officer, not a damned stuntwoman, although if got harder and harder to tell once you’d signed your first Section 31. The van still felt too fast, way too fast, but she looked up and Basira nodded at her, and that meant it was the right speed no matter what Daisy’s instincts said, so she jumped.

She curled herself around Sims as best she could and rolled, the road tearing at her shoulder and back, nearly rolling right into Basira’s parked car. Then Basira was by her side, leaning Sims on her shoulder, helping Daisy to her feet.

“You alright?”

“Yeah. Is Sims alive? Bit of a waste of time if not.”

“I’m alive,” he mumbled.

“Great,” Basira said. “Let’s get you both to hospital then.”

Daisy stared after the van, almost out of sight already. They were the real prey, and part of her wanted to get behind the wheel and pursue, or run after the van if she had to. Normally, she wouldn’t be babysitting the victim; she’d be out there preparing to make the arrest, the takedown that the other police, the ones who’d been on the crew to block in and slow down the van without stopping it and risking the kidnappers getting out and endangering Sims, would be making. Normally, she’d be out there engaging with whatever the hell those things were who’d almost stolen Isaac, who’d endangered this weird librarian, who looked human but didn’t flinch at the strike of a baton and had hands like blocks of cement. And today, her colleagues were stealing that from her, while she nursed a torn up shoulder and id babysitting duty.

But she hadn’t come out today to be a detective. She’d come out to help Basira.

So she got into the car, and let Basira drive them to the hospital.


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun with Elias!

“Martin, I have to get back to the archives.”

“You’re in hospital, Jon. Why don’t you ever just let yourself be in hospital? Look at you!”

“I’ll be fine with some food and rest. Martin, they’re planning the apocalypse!”

“The Unknowing, yeah. You didn’t happen to learn where the ritual site was, did you?”

Jon stared. “How did you know about – ”

“What, you think we just sit on our hands all day when you’re not there? We’re looking at an apocalypse in about two months, or at least we were before your rescue; they might be delayed finding another skin for the Dancer, unless you know whether they’ve got backups?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Right. Safest to assume we’re still on the two month deadline anyway. We can interfere and delay them, but if we want to delay them for any real length of time, like centuries, we need to destroy the ritual while it’s underway. Except we don’t have a way to do that yet. Tim keeps hinting that he’s working on something, but he won’t tell any of us what it is, and honestly I don’t think it’s going all that well.”

“How is Tim?”

“Fine. I mean, not fine. But focused on saving the world. Well… focused on destroying a circus. Same thing.”

“And Sasha? Mary?”

“Everyone’s fine. Even Melanie’s settling in alright.”

“Who?”

“Melanie King. The youtuber? Elias hired her as an archival assistant.”

“What? When?!”

“A couple of weeks ago. You’ve missed a lot.”

“It certainly sounds like it!”

“Yeah. And when you’re out of hospital and properly rested, we um, we need your help. With your truth question thing. Our best bet on finding the ritual site for the Unknowing is to, um… ask the monster.”

“The monster.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if your power works on monsters, but…”

“It does. I had no problem with it the couple of times I managed to speak to my captors, and it works fine on Michael. What monster?”

“Mary.”

“… what?”

“She’s a monster. Um. Do you remember that anatomy professor? Dr Elliott?”

“Statement #0161207. What about him?”

“Mary’s one of his students. From the statement.”

“Mary.”

“Yes.”

“Mary Sue.”

“Yes.”

“But she’s… she… what?”

“I know!”

“Does she know you know? Is everyone – ”

“Safe? Yeah. She knows we know, although Melanie doesn’t know, and we’ve been keeping her… entertained, while we try to find a way to contain or, or kill her. She’s play-acting at being friendly and helpful, for now, but with the Unknowing coming up…”

“She’s going to have to drop that soon enough. Yes. I suppose I should question her, then.”

“ _After_ you’re out of hospital.”

“I don’t need to be fully recovered to ask a few questions, Martin.”

“Of a monster who might snap and try to kill you mid-examination?”

“… Okay, fair point.”

“Also, Elias said the Institute will pay for therapy if you – ”

“I don’t need therapy, Martin.”

“Jon, you were kidnapped by evil clowns for a month! They wanted to skin you for a world-ending ritual!”

“Most of them weren’t clowns, actually. There was an organist and the Dancer and a lot of… taxidermied people involved.”

“Oh, well, that sounds a lot less traumatising!”

“Well, after we deal with the apocalypse I’ll look for a therapist, alright? Hey, when did you start wearing gloves?”

“A couple of weeks ago. Don't -- The weather’s been cold! Oh, yeah; I should probably warn you about Elias, too. He does have spooky powers.”

“I thought he would. Any idea what they are?”

“We know what some of them are. There’s probably more. He can see and hear stuff at a distance, and, and know things about you past, things that even you don’t know. And he can, um… project? Memories, I guess, or… or concepts? Into your head.”

“Like forcing a statement into your head?”

“I don’t think so. Tim wasn’t… talkative about it, when he got back. But he’s been _very_ careful not to upset Elias too much ever since.”

“That’s… probably concerning.”

“Well, yeah. But unlike the monsters and the apocalypse and everything, there’s not that much we can do about it, is there?”

“I suppose not. Well. I look forward to coming to grips with all this mess!”

“ _After_ you – ”

“Yes, Martin – _After_ I get out of hospital and get some rest.”

\----------------

  
  


Melanie’s hand was steady around the cup as she raised her hand to knock on Elias’ door. Her comment to Mary about killing Elias had been a joke when she’d said it, but she couldn’t get the idea out of her head, and as time went on, she’d become more and more convinced that it was the only way out. He had done this to her. He had trapped her here. He had trapped all of them here, and so many of her coworkers had acquired scars here already, and it was only a matter of time before she did too, something worse than a ghost bullet, and this man was trying to trap her, to corral her, to control her…

Her hand was trembling. But Melanie was, among other things in her old job at Ghost Hunt UK, an actress. She took a breath, waited for the tremble to stop, and knocked.

“Came in.”

“Hi, Elias.” She plastered a genuine-looking smile on her face. “I was out picking up coffee for everyone, and I thought you could probably do with one. I wasn’t sure how you take it, but I thought black without sugar was probably right?” She set it on his desk.

“It is right. Thank you, Melanie.” He glanced at the drink. “But you seem to be working hard, I’m sure you could use a pick-me-up yourself. Why don’t you drink it?”

“Oh, no; I have my own down in the archives, so…”

“One with fewer painkillers dissolved in it?”

Melanie didn’t know what to say to that. The silence stretched.

“People often assume that coffee is a good drink for hiding such things, but it really isn’t. They leave a taste, and a chalky residue that’s quite visible, especially if the coffee is served black. I’m curious; do you know what dosage it would take to kill a man of my size, or were you simply hoping that if you’d gotten it wrong you could finish the job… manually?”

Melanie’s breath caught in her throat. “Why ask? Why even ask if you _know everything_?”

“Oh, I don’t know everything. Could you imagine how exhausting that would be? But I do know some important information that you don’t, and that it would greatly benefit you to know if this is the course of action you’ve decided on.” He picked up the coffee, inspected it. “I know, for example, what would happen to you if I drank this. Do you?”

“Yeah, we’d be free,” she spat.

“An interesting assumption. What lead you to that conclusion?”

“What do you mean? You trapped me here! You trapped all of us here!”

“I handed you a contract to sign, certainly. But if a man locks a tiger in a cage and then you poison him, does the tiger’s cage magically unlock? No.” He put the cup down and met her eyes. “What happens is that the tiger starves to death, because you’ve just killed the person who feeds it.”

“I… I don’t…”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I sometimes forget that you’re all still rather new to this, and the distraction of an upcoming apocalypse probably doesn’t help. Let us try another metaphor – you are an arm of this institute. Or a finger might be better; all of you, fingers on a hand. And I am its beating heart. What happens to a finger when the heart stops beating, Melanie?”

Melanie snorted. “What, so if you die, we all die?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“That’s ridiculous. That’s not even a good lie.”

“It is, nevertheless, the truth. So let’s have no more clumsy assassination attempts, hmm? I’ll let this slide, but further incidents will reflect very poorly in your performance review.”

And like that, he was back to paperwork. Like she wasn’t even there.

His face was _so damn punchable_. But Melanie wasn’t an idiot. So she turned and left. She turned, and stalked out of that smug fucker’s office, and left him to his spreadsheets and theatrics. He was right about one thing, though; there would be no more clumsy assassination attempts.

Next time, she wouldn’t be clumsy.

\----------------------

“If he dies, we die?” Sasha asked, looking around at the other archival assistants.

“That’s what he says,” Melanie said glumly.

“Seriously?”

Melanie shrugged.

“I can’t believe you just tried to _murder our boss_ ,” Martin said. “Is nobody worried about that? The attempted murder?”

“Our boss murdered the previous Archivist,” Mary pointed out.

“Okay, yeah, that’s true, but that’s also more reason to not tick him off, isn’t it?”

“It’s bullshit anyway,” Tim said, without looking up from his computer screen. “The whole ‘we die if he dies’ thing.”

“Exactly!” Melanie exclaimed.

“We don’t know that,” Martin protested. “We don’t know anything about him. We didn’t know he could do what he did to Tim until he did it, we didn’t know we couldn’t quit until we tried. Why wouldn’t this be true?”

“We know it’s bullshit,” Tim said, “because when Gertrude became head archivist, James Wright was the head of the Institute. And then he went missing, and Elias Bouchard took over, and a week later it turned out Wright had died in artefact storage. Know who hadn’t died? Gertrude.”

“Okay,” Martin relented. “That’s a fair point.”

“Not really,” Sasha said. “That just tells us that Jon’s fine. Did Gertrude have any assistants?”

“Don’t know. I’d have to check. But why would the rules be different for Monsterboss?”

“For the same reason you keep calling him that. Anyone else develop any spooky symptoms working down here?”

Martin shoved his left hand in his pocket and shook his head along with the other assistants. But he was already thinking through the implications of Tim’s words.

Maybe Tim was right; James Wright had died and Gertrude had lived, and that meant that Elias was lying. But if he’d been found a week after Elias had taken over, that was a full week in which he could’ve died without being the head of the Institute. There were plenty of things in artefact storage that could take more than a week to kill someone; if he’d gotten caught in something fatal, Elias had been rushed through a promotion to avoid unnecessary deaths when Wright perished…

Maybe. Maybe not. The important thing was that they didn’t have solid evidence that Wright had died as head of the Institute, so Martin wasn’t willing to call Elias’ bluff. Meaning that if they did need to kill Elias, they needed something more thought out than a quick assassination; they should remove him as head of the Institute first, just to be safe.

Obviously, nobody was going to kill Elias. It was awful, scary, that Melanie had tried. They weren’t murderers, Martin himself wasn’t a murderer, and anyway, who could say that Elias’ replacement wouldn’t be worse? They didn’t know how the structure worked, or if his replacement would have Elias’ powers, or even worse powers, and none of it mattered anyway because Martin was never going to help kill someone! (Except apocalypse clowns, maybe.)

But as an intellectual exercise. If it were ever going to be on the table in theory, although of course no one would ever have to actually do it, then they’d need a plan to replace him in the Institute first.

And that was a fascinating and complicated intellectual exercise.


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon gets some answers.

Jon stared at his notes. He’d spoken to each of his assistants individually, and they’d all given him a slightly different version of what was going on, but he was pretty sure he had the general picture. Martin had, of course, protested his return to work a mere two days after getting out of hospital (the weekend DID count, no matter what Martin said!), but had backed down when Jon had snapped at him that he’d had an entire month ‘resting’ by himself and didn’t particularly care to continue the practice at home.

He was still doing physical therapy, of course. The circus had taken care with his skin (he’d deliberately roughed up his arms and ankles on the ropes, just to piss them off), but had had no such interest in preserving his muscles, and now he had to eat and exercise to get both his weight and strength back. And sitting at home wasn’t going to help with that, either.

He needed to figure out what to do about Mary. Obviously, he was going to have to interrogate her about the Unknowing, but when he did she’d almost certainly drop the friendly facade. And they’d have to do… something… about her anyway, before the ritual, or she’d stop them from interfering. They had limited time left to figure out a plan and enact it, they didn’t need distractions, and Elias kept cornering Jon and inquiring about his ‘progress’, reminding him he needed to be ‘strong enough’ for what was coming. He seemed genuinely worried. Which didn’t bode well.

Tim entered without knocking. “Heya, boss.”

“Hello again, Tim. How are – I mean, I’m interested in knowing how you’re doing, Tim.”

Tim snorted. “Same old, same old. Building full of monsters, world about to end.” He was being less hostile, at least – Jon wouldn’t call him friendly, but he wasn’t treating Jon as an enemy. For the moment. “Got a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah. When you moved in, and this place was all full of Gertrude’s stuff, did you find a necklace? It would’ve had a lock of hair in it.”

“I don’t… I don’t know. Is it important?”

“It’s important to me.”

“Tim, what are you up – ” but Jon cut himself off at the flash of anger in Tim’s eyes. “Sorry.”

“You’ll want to get a tighter handle on that, boss,” Tim snapped.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Um, I think I stuck all of Gertrude’s random knicknacks in a box and put it in the corner in the main archive storage. Near the tapes, where all the miscellaneous things end up?”

“Right. I’ll look there then. Um… get some rest, okay?”

“As I told Martin, rest is the absolute last thing I need right now. But thank you for your concern.”

“Yeah.” Tim left. Jon briefly considered trying to find out what he was doing, but he had enough on his plate. Much as he hated not knowing something, everyone else probably had a better handle on things at the moment than he did.

And he had a monster to interrogate.

\-----------------------

  
  


“Are we _sure_ we have a solid plan for – ?” Sasha began.

“I’ve got it handled,” Tim said. “Trust me.”

“You’re not going to, you know, hurt her, are you?” Martin asked.

Tim stared at him like he was a lunatic. “What do you think, Martin?”

“Well, I… it’s just… I mean, she’s been helpful…”

“She nearly got you and Sasha eaten by a monster in artefact storage.”

“She also saved me from a monster in artefact storage,” Sasha pointed out. “I’m not… sure why, but…”

“Because it was more fun to see you scared, that’s why,” Tim growled. “Sometimes, they let people go. For a bit. For the fear. That’s how these things _work_. But the niceness is an act, and she will kill us when she gets bored.”

“Hey, quick question,” Melanie put in, “what the hell are you guys talking about?”

“Oh, right,” Tim said. “Uh, Mary’s an evil monster trying to bring about the apocalypse, when she gets back from lunch Jon’s going to interrogate her, and then we gotta deal with her before she kills us all.”

“Deal with? What do you mean ‘deal with’?”

“It’s fine, I’m handling it.”

“Tim, what do you mean by ‘deal with’?”

“Hi, everyone!” Mary chirped, walking in and heading straight for her desk to get back to work. The other assistants exchanged glances. Sasha reached under her desk, hands closing around her axe just in case, while Tim leaned on the closed door. Martin wen to fetch Jon.

Now that they were actually at this point, Sasha didn’t feel like they were nearly prepared enough. She didn’t like that Tim had been so cagey about his plan with Mary, didn’t trust that it was foolproof without seeing the plan herself. But Tim was insistent that he didn’t need help and Martin, for whatever reason, had backed him up, agreeing that Tim could handle it, so she hadn’t pressed the issue.

But she didn’t like not being in the loop. She didn’t like not being useful. She glanced at Melanie, who looked as confused and angry as Sasha felt. They were going to have to apologise, later, for keeping the whole Mary thing from her. After Mary wasn’t a problem any more.

Martin returned with Jon, and sat down at his desk. Sasha knew he’d have a hand on his axe, too. He looked as frightened and apprehensive as she felt; the last time they’d tangled with one of these monsters, things had… not gone well.

Jon placed a spare chair in front of Mary’s desk, sat down, and stared right at her. “Hello, Mary.”

“Hello, Jon!” She looked up and carefully analysed his expression. Then she carefully analysed the expressions of everyone else in the room. Then she seemed to realise that something was happening. “Something is wrong.”

“Not necessarily,” Jon said. “Not if we’re all reasonable. But I do have some questions for you. What are you, Mary?”

“I’m Mary.”

“For now.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not human, are you?”

“No.”

“You’re a, a monster, a… fear entity, a piece of the Stranger. Aren’t you?”

“I… suppose so? I’m not _completely_ familiar with your… fear cosmology, but that sounds right.”

“You’re trying to bring about the Unknowing.”

Mary didn’t answer. She glanced at the door; Tim braced his feet. Sasha’s hand tightened on her axe.

Jon tried again. “Are you trying to bring about the Unknowing?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing, to bring about the Unknowing?”

“Right now I am just waiting for the call. I haven’t been given any tasks.”

Sasha hadn’t expected this answer. Nor, it seemed, had anyone else.

“You haven’t been… then why are you – ?”

“Friends don’t pry,” Mary growled.

“Why are you – ?”

Mary’s hand shot out. She dug two fingers into Jon’s cheeks, pushing them between his teeth so he couldn’t speak. “Stop.”

Jon simply tipped his chair back until he was out of her reach, regarding her with what Sasha considered a suicidal level of disdain. She stood up, keeping the axe held low enough to be hidden by her desk for now. No reason to _instigate_ a fight, but…

Martin, it seemed, was less cautious; he’d moved almost behind Mary, who was too busy glaring at Jon to have noticed. Jon simply resettled his chair out of grabbing distance and looked her up and down.

“Mary, I have spent the last month at the mercy of things much scarier than you and frankly I’m a little tired of being manhandled by various fake people and nameless weirdos who are trying to destroy the world as I know it. _You_ came here, into _this_ place, this temple to the Beholding; _you_ came here, into _my_ archive, and _you are going to answer my questions_.”

Sasha, Melanie, and Martin all tensed, ready to spring in when Mary attacked Jon… but, miraculously, that didn’t happen. Mary just hunched in her seat like a spoiled child and mumbled again, “Friends don’t pry.”

“You want to know what friends don’t do, Mary? Friends don’t try to destroy friends’ lives; friends don’t trick friends into going to destroy artefacts in order to try to kill them; friends don’t let their friends get kidnapped for a month by their other friends who want to skin them for – ”

“The circus aren’t my friends!” Mary snapped. “I had no idea they were going to grab you. I didn’t know why they had you until everyone else figured it out. I didn’t know where they’d taken you. There was nothing I could do to help!”

“And would you have helped, if you could?”

“Yes!” Mary exclaimed, and then looked shocked at her own answer. Sasha wondered vaguely whether that shocked expression was something she had to decide to put on her face, or whether it was a genuine emotion. She supposed it didn’t matter, since Mary presumably couldn’t lie to Jon; theatrics or not, she had to be telling the truth when she haltingly continued, like she was only just figuring out the answer herself as she went, “If I had a good chance to save you, I would’ve taken it. I would have… I would have made them delay the ritual to find another damn skin. There are other options, that don’t involve hurting you.”

“What other options?”

“I don’t really know. There was a gorilla skin, bu I think they lost it? They don’t tell me these things, I’m not… I’m not some Unknowing mastermind, I’m just _here_.”

“Why are you here?” Jon asked. “Why did you come to the Institute?”

“We were sent out into the world to find jobs. Elias hired me.”

“Why the Institute specifically?”

“Because it’s… we don’t like it here. Things like me, I mean. We don’t like being looked at this closely. I thought… I thought it was the place I’d be most likely to be alone.”

“You’re not here to steal anything? To spy on us?”

“Spying is what _you_ do. I haven’t hidden anything from them if they ask, but they usually don’t ask.”

“You came here to… run away from your kind?”

“No! I just… I wanted some space. Parvel and Erika and Juan and the others were great, we could all help each other learn, but everyone else was always so ready to move on so quickly and I never was. I wanted to be Mary somewhere where I didn’t have to worry about them thinking I was doing it wrong, so when we split up, I looked for somewhere that they and the circus and everyone else probably wouldn’t want to spend much time.”

This was not an answer that Sasha had been expecting. Judging from everyone else’s expressions, it wasn’t an answer that anyone had been expecting. She’d been wracking her brains trying to figure out what Mary might want from the Institute, why she’d brave infiltrating the place knowing that Elias would probably spot her, and ‘I wanted somewhere my family would hate so they’d give me space’ had _not_ been on her list of potential answers.

“Okay,” Jon said. “Okay.” He rubbed his temples.

“Let’s talk about the Unknowing.”


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon gets some more answers.

_I knew the dame was trouble as soon as she walked in_ , Basira thought to herself in her best Detective Noir mental voice. But for once, Daisy didn’t look like trouble. She just looked tired, as she slumped into the chair across from Basira’s desk and accepted the strong coffee that Basira pushed into her hands.

“You alright?” Barisa asked.

“Mmm.”

“Aren’t you normally on shift about now?”

“They gave me some _leave_ ,” Daisy said, her mouth curling around the word like it was a personal insult. “Like they think a spooky van ride and a cut up shoulder is gonna make me a liability.”

“You deserve some leave,” Basira said firmly.

“Mmm.” Daisy sipped the coffee. “I’ve been having dreams.”

“Nightmares?”

“Yeah. But not like… not like how they happen, sometimes. A recurring dream.” She glanced up at Basira, a question in her eyes, and Basira immediately understood.

Oh, no. This was her fault. She should’ve described her dreams better, should’ve been more open with Daisy, even if it made her look like a fool. She shouldn’t have let Daisy get into that van without _warning_ her. It hadn’t even occurred to her that there’d be a danger; Daisy was always so tight-lipped! She wouldn’t… she’d never…

“Daisy. What did you tell Jonathan Sims?”

\-------------------

  
  


“When is the Unknowing taking place?”

“I don’t know. Soon. They’ll be delayed now while they find another skin, but I think they have most pieces in place.”

“Where is the Unknowing taking place?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in London, I’m pretty sure. A place that humans ascribe a lot of meaning and power to, for us; a theatre or a circus or, or something like that, with the space to dance.”

Jon sat back and tried not to let his frustration show on his face. So this was why Mary hadn’t made any serious attempt to fight or run, but instead was cooperating with his questioning. His questions weren’t a threat. She didn’t know anything important.

“Will they call you for the Unknowing?”

“I think so. They’ll want as many singers and dancers as possible, so I think they’ll call everyone in the area.”

“What happens if you don’t show up?”

“They’ll continue with everyone they do have.”

“If we try to stop the Unknowing, will you stop us?”

“Yes,” she admitted through gritted teeth, glaring at him. “If I can.”

“Will you kill us?”

“Only if you make me. Please don’t make me.”

 _Are the tears in her eyes real, or part of the illusion?_ Jon wondered. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean… there have been a lot of delays. The Unknowing has been attacked before, things have been stolen or sabotaged, you escaped… delays happen, and they’re fine, and the circus finds another way. But… but if you put the whole ritual in danger, like how everyone starts planning to do whenever I’m not here, I… I don’t want to hurt my friends. But it’s too important. If I have to kill you to save the world from you, then yes, I will.”

“We’re trying to save the world from you. What do you mean, save the world from us?”

“From the Eye. If we don’t save the world, you will destroy it. Or one of the others will. We probably won’t get another chance if the Unknowing fails; we will run out of time. So it cannot fail.”

A familiar feeling rose in Jon, like an old friend – the distinct sense that he had massively misread a situation, to the point where he had no idea what he’d misread or how to get back on track.

“The Eye’s not destroying the world,” Jon said. “We’re not going to start any apocalypse.”

“Do you think you’re the Eye’s only servant, Archivist?” Mary asked with a smile that was more teeth than warmth. “The circus will continue with the Unknowing whether I want them to or not. Do you have more control over your cousins than me?”

Something in her tone…

“Mary, do you even want the Unknowing to take place?”

“Yes. It’s better than any of the other options.”

“Okay, but… if nobody else was going to attempt an apocalypse ever, if it was just between this world and the Unknowing… then would you want the Unknowing to take place?”

Mary hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m… I’m very young, I’m not used to… having… things.”

“Having things?”

“To being things. I… things are unknowable, interchangeable, under the meaningless labels. The Circus are trying to purify the world, trying to remove the… the false illusion of meaning, to give us all the freedom to choose our illusions, although even saying ‘our’ is… yes, stop _pushing_ , I’m _answering_ , the right words just don’t _exist_. Masks are interchangeable when nothing has meaning, but if they’re interchangeable then that also means they don’t have… value. You can decide whether something has value, I think? For yourself? And even though value is also an illusion, it… has value… if you decide it does. I think.” She put her head in her hands. “There are no words for this.”

“No, no,” Jon said, “I think I understand what you mean.”

“I don’t know if the Unknowing is better, because I haven’t had time to figure this out yet. I’m going to be sad when I’m not Mary any more, and I’m not… supposed to be. Or maybe I won’t be sad, in the new world, because everything will be different so I will be too, if I’m even a ‘me’, which I might not be. I don’t know what the Unknowing will do to us. I don’t know what we’ll be in a place where we’re not surrounded by humans so certain in their own identities, to give us stability. I’m used to not knowing things, and not knowing is fine, but…”

“But?”

“I think maybe the circus doesn’t know, either.”

“And you’re not ready to find out.”

“I’m not ready to find out. A world that’s for us sounds amazing, but I don’t know if it’s… right. I don’t think more is always better, or easy is always better. It’s like… it’s like… ” she shook her head.

“Like gorging on nothing but your favourite food every day, as much as you wanted,” Melanie supplied. “Until eventually, the idea of flavour is meaningless.”

“Yes!” Mary nodded.

“And when that food is identity and meaning itself…” Jon said thoughtfully. “I think I understand. Wait here for a bit, okay? I want to talk to the others.”

He ushered everyone except Mary into his office.

“Well,” Melanie said. “That was… something.”

“She’s going to be gone when we go back out,” Tim said. “She’ll run right off to the circus and tell them whatever they need to know to kill us all and take Jon again. No way she still thinks of us as friends now.”

“I don’t think she will,” Martin said.

“I don’t believe it,” Sasha said, shaking her head. “We’ve got a… a hippie monster.”

“How do you figure?” Jon asked.

“Well, not a hippie, but I don’t know the right word. She’s like… she’s like those people who think that stuff that’s difficult and scarce and natural is better, like people who only eat what they grow in their own backyard and lament the agricultural revolution or whatever.”

“They’re not wrong,” Jon said. “While agriculture greatly increased the amount of people we can support, and the complexity and variety of civilisations, the actual health and happiness of the average individual was massively decreased by its invention. Even today, the average adult is far less happy or healthy than the average pre-agricultural adult, and of course the industrial revolution, another massive ‘advancement’ for humanity, created a similar downswing in – ” He noticed that everyone was staring at him. “Right. Anyway.”

“Are you suggesting humanity should abandon agriculture?” Sasha asked, amused.

“No! Billions of people would die! Anyway, we’ve changed so many plants an animals and so much land… it’s not the kind of thing that’s reversible.” _But if I, like Mary, were a hunter-gatherer standing on the cusp of the agricultural revolution and I could somehow foresee the effect it would have on my people, would I start planting those seeds?_ _Maybe, for the temporary boost it would give my tribe… especially if I knew that the neighbouring tribe would be coming up with a similar idea pretty soon, and didn’t want them the get the immediate benefits and wipe my tribe out_. “Anyway. It seems that Mary knows nothing useful.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Tim said. “That would be too easy and straightforward. No, we have to do things the most difficult way possible.”

“I still can’t believe that none of you told me my coworker was an actual monster,” Melanie said. “Who keeps that a secret?”

“It was my idea not to tell you,” Martin said. “Blame me. And it was because we didn’t know you yet. We didn’t know how you’d react.”

“Oh, great. Makes me so much better to hear that my coworkers are babying me because they’re scared of how I’ll react to things.”

“You did try to kill Elias,” Martin pointed out.

“She _what_?!” Jon asked. “Not important. I mean, yes, massively important, but not our top priority right now.”

“How messed up is it that attempted murder doesn’t make our list of priorities?” Martin said.

“So there’s just a, a monster in the office,” Melanie said. “Great.” 

“Nothing new,” Tim shrugged, shooting a glare at Jon.

Jon rubbed his temples. Why had he been so eager to come back here, again?

\------------------------

  
  


“Oh god,” Basira breathed. “I’m sorry, I… I shouldn’t have involved you in this.”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course you should have. Don’t worry, Basira; I’ll solve this problem.”

“What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

“It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.” Daisy went to stand up, but Basira grabbed her arm.

“Daisy. Don’t hurt him.”

“ … What?”

“I know your job is sometimes… complicated… but promise me you won’t hurt Jonathan Sims. Okay?”

Daisy stared at her. “He’s a monster, Basira. He… he dragged that story out of me, and now he’s in both of our heads. Are we supposed to ignore that? Just let him run around doing that to other people?”

“He didn’t, he didn’t hurt anyone – ”

“Do you honestly believe that? He’s hurting you every night, and even if he wasn’t, these things don’t stop at mind games. He’s out there doing worse than this; they always are.”

“You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing that.”

“Why are you so bloody protective of him?”

“Because I have to do _some_ good!” she snapped. “Since I left the force, I… he’s the only person I’ve been able to save. And that only happened because of the dreams. I can’t go back, not after… I’ve seen them screw over too many officers, I’ve seen them leave us alone and unsupported too many times because nobody else wants a Section 31, but out here I feel like more people might be getting hurt or dying, people I could’ve saved if I was still there. But I can’t go back, I _can’t_. And we saved this guy, Daisy.”

“He’s a monster,” Daisy said slowly, like she was explaining something to a small child. “We can save people by taking him out.”

“We don’t know that.”

Daisy sighed. “Fine.  I think you’re being bloody stupid, but fine; I won’t go after him over this. But if I do catch him doing something worse, if he shows up in a case where, where nightmare monsters are killing people or something – ”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Look… how much leave do you have?”

Daisy screwed up her face. “They won’t let me back for another week.”

“Do you wanna… catch a movie or something?”

“Aren’t you working?”

“If somebody comes in that desperate for me to take their spousal cheating case or find their lost cat while we’re out, they can leave a message. Come on; I’ll buy you an overpriced ice cream.”


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Martin is completely fine and so is everyone else.

When they walked out of the office, Mary was working. Just sitting at her computer, typing up a statement. Doing her job. To Martin, that seemed absurd, but when he thought about it… what else would she do? Just sit there?

Martin did some typing, too. Typing with two hands, because, to his great relief, the antifungal treatment he’d put on his fingers _was working_. He had almost full use of his hand already; he’d woken up that morning with almost the entire hand paralysed and panicked, but movement had returned during the hour he’d spent at his Red String Corkboard, winding yarn around pins to connect concepts, and by the time he’d gotten to work, he could comfortably type. (Which was good, because Colin had told him that the prosthetic he wanted was probably impossible, unless he wanted to find a professional to design it.) He was incredibly relieved to learn that it must have been a fungal infection and not… any of the more complicated possibilities that had come to mind.

Mary left at exactly five o’clock with a bright “Goodbye!” to everyone, like they hadn’t cornered and interrogated her. Tim left about two minutes later, picking up something small from his desk before he headed out the door. Martin didn’t see what it was, but somehow, (maybe from the way Tim held it, careful but unafraid), he could sense its potential, its power – none at all, except if used in a very specific way. And Tim was always a bit rash, tending to overplay or underplay his hand, so as he left, Martin called out. “Tim. Whatever your plan is, be careful, okay? Don’t get short-changed. You might need every bit of leverage you can get.”

Tim just gave him a weird look and left.

Martin went home to his corkboard. He suppose that he could move it to the archives, since there was no point in keeping it from Mary any more, but it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for her to be able to see with a glance exactly how much they knew and what they were planning, at least when they had a plan. Besides, it would be difficult to move. He’d run out of space on the corkboard itself days ago, and notes were pinned across the walls of his bedroom and well into the hall. He was going to have to replaster and paint the walls before he moved out, but that shouldn’t be hard.

The layout was… neatly chaotic. From a distance, it looked like jut a mess of string and notes of very few words, but he’d arranged it so that whatever he was trying to see was obvious at a glance. He’d kept down the amount of string by only marking about a tenth of the actual connections to keep everything neat; anything that was obviously implied by another connection, any connection within one or two degrees of separation of a marked one, he didn’t bother to connect with string. There was no sense in cluttering up the board with the obvious.

Most of his bedroom wall was, of course, taken up by the Unknowing. That was definitely going to need updating, with the very valuable information they’d gotten from Mary – probably in London, the sort of place that humans would give meaning and power associated with the Stranger, and with room to Dance. He had space to expand the Unknowing notes now that he’d been able to take down his Missing Jon notes, and there was probably reason to tentatively assume – although it would be a mistake to rely to heavily on the idea – that since Breekon and Hope had been driving Jon about in a fairly small area (as determined by Sasha tracking his phone to a single cell tower), they’d possibly been keeping him close to the ritual site. He’d float the possibility with Sasha tomorrow; she could search an area for possible sites more efficiently than he could.

The Unknowing was not the only thing on his board. Well, wall. To one side fo the Unknowing was fourteen cards, labelled with fourteen fears. The Stranger was connected with a piece of yarn to the Unknowing; The Flesh and The Desolation had their own little cards of notes detailing when Gertrude had foiled their rituals, and a brief description of how, according to what they could glean from the statements, Gertrude had foiled them. The Observing, he’d simply drawn a thick black cross through; that left ten rituals to look into, once they were done with the Unknowing. If they were really, really lucky, the statements they hadn’t looked at yet would show Gertrude defeating all of them, and they’d be in the clear after the Unknowing. But given how sure Mary had seemed that some other apocalypse would succeed if the Unknowing didn’t, Martin doubted it.

On the other side of the Unknowing notes, red string stretched between cards that were mostly blank, but for the occasional obscure symbol or initial that Martin used to orient himself. That one was a challenge. One he really shouldn’t be wasting time with, when the Unknowing was so urgent, but he couldn’t resist at least mapping it out. If he did have to go up against Elias Bouchard, how would he? How do you take down a man who can apparently see anything, who can control people’s thoughts (or at least impose thoughts on people), who you were trapped under, who you couldn’t kill without dying? How would he leverage things to swing them in his favour instead of Elias’, when Elias held all the power and all the knowledge?

Well, he wouldn’t map his plan out on easily readable cards on a wall where Elias could presumably see it, thus the lack of card labels. He was certain that he’d been obscure enough with the few symbols he’d used that nobody could even guess what he was mapping. He’d look through it later, but he didn’t have time for diversions at the moment. He was supposed to be saving the world.

Martin picked up his pins and started to update his conceptual map of the Unknowing.

\-------------------------

  
  


_Look at you, following a woman home from work,_ Tim thought wryly to himself. But he had to be sure that Mary was going home, and not… off to get them all killed and Jon re-kidnapped, or whatever. He didn’t believe for a second that she’d been entirely honest with Jon, no matter how sure the Monsterboss was in his powers. Tim knew very well that the world was full of things a lot stronger than Jon. Besides, masks and illusions and threats behind smiles was what the Stranger _did_. He wouldn’t be surprised if something like Mary could put on a new ‘truth’, have it pulled out of her by Jon, and then simply discard it.

But she did go home. Tim watched her house from far away enough to be unobtrusive, hand clutched around Jude’s payment, which he’d found in the box that Jon had pointed out. He’d told the others he could handle Mary, that he didn’t need their help, and he didn’t. Jude’s little congregation could handle Mary with ease.

But he couldn’t help but wonder about what Martin had said about not getting short-changed, about needing all the leverage he could get. Was this the best use of the resources he had?

Tim wasn’t self-unaware. He knew perfectly well why he had to do this himself. He might like to tell himself it was because he couldn’t trust some of his coworkers, because he wanted to protect the others, because there were too many things to focus on at once and it made sense to take this one off their hands, but he wasn’t an idiot. He was here, alone, because he was owed revenge for what these monsters had done to Danny.

Mary hadn’t been involved with Danny, so far as Tim knew, but that didn’t really matter. She was one of those things, and she would have hurt plenty of others. They took one of his, he’d take as many of theirs as he could. He’d make them regret their existence down to whatever served as their bones, right before they perished screaming. But…

But he had limited leverage with Jude. And the circus was out there, close by. And Grimmauldi was out there, close by. They were the real targets. They were what mattered. Mary was a distraction. A waste of resources. He could use what he had more wisely.

Tim called Jude.

\------------------------

  
  


Elias was beginning to think that he may have plotted himself into a corner.

Everything about the plan had seemed fine. The Unknowing was the perfect excuse to get his Archivist marked by the Stranger, and though there was no real threat, the search for other rituals would give Jon plenty of chances to pick up his missing marks. One or two of them might be difficult – he still had no idea what he was going to do about the End – but all in all, he should be able to pull his ritual off without anyone noticing a thing until it was too late.

Except for the damn kidnapping. Elias wasn’t sure of exactly what had happened to Jon in his months’ absence, but judging from the condition he’d come home in, he had to be well and truly marked. Which made the Unknowing rather pointless – dangerous, in fact.

Because Jon wasn’t ready. His compulsion powers were developing fine, and he’d taken straight to reading statements again as soon as he was back, but he couldn’t see anything. He had two months, give or take, to develop some _real_ power, or the moment the Unknowing started he was going to be helpless. He’d miscalculated, giving him so many assistants; he’d expected Jon to be driven relentlessly forward like Gertrude, to use them properly, but he’d gotten himself kidnapped and they’d done most of his job for him, robbing him of the opportunity to develop his powers.

There was nothing for it. He was going to have to force his Archivist to grow. He was going to have to find something to push him to develop his skills in the limited time they had.

It was time to stir up some hornet’s nests.


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone meets people in coffee shops. This is a coffee shop AU now.

_Okay, Tim. This is your element. Pull out all the stops and be the most Obnoxious Little Bitch you can be. You’ve been training your whole life for this moment._

Tim Sauntered into the cafe. Jude was already there, and glanced up at his approach. “So you did find it, then?”

“Yep.” Tim pulled out the locket, and opened it briefly to reveal the lock of auburn hair, the last earthly piece of Agnes Montague. (Well, the last piece that Jude knew about. There might be more in that weird ritual clearing in the middle of nowhere, but Tim wasn’t about to enlighten her about that.) He snapped the locket shut and pocketed it as Jude reached for it.

“I could simply kill you for it, you know,” Jude growled.

“Why didn’t you just take some hair from her when you killed her? Thought your friends would judge you for it? Probably sacrilege or something.”

The table began to smoulder under Jude’s hands.

“Relax, Jude; you can have it. For a price – a new price. The situation had changed.”

“What, you make up with your little girlfriend in the archives? You want me to kill someone else for you now?”

“Close enough.” Tim sat down opposite her. He put the locket on the table, covering it with his hand. “You’re going to help me burn down a circus.”

“Am I really? And why would I do that? I might be persuaded to find some amusement in burning your Eye lackey friend, given how much of an annoyance your kind have been to us in the past, but I have nothing against the Circus, and a little trinket isn’t going to change my mind.”

“And the fact that they’re trying to end the world doesn’t bother you?”

“Well, if one wanted to cause the greatest amount of despair, one would say that a good old clown apocalypse is just what the world needed, hmm?” Jude said, with obviously fake indifference.

 _Okay. Time to either get killed by a pissed-off cultist, or not_. Tim leaned forward. “But we both know things are more complicated than that, Jude. I know you.”

“What from reading a couple of pathetic statements?”

“Yes. From a couple of pathetic statements. Because that has all that’s worth knowing about your kind. You might think you’re big and scary and such complex people, but you’re not. You think there’s special about what you are, about what you do? No. every human alive has stood on the edge of a balcony or next to a busy highway and revelled in the inherent power they have to make that simple choice to step forward, to destroy all that potential and careful planning with one quick decision. Everyone knows what it’s like to self-sabotage something important and feel the power and agency in being able to break a future. There’s nothing special about that, nothing divine; you just got addicted to a fear of desolation and were too cowardly to feed it yourself, so you turned to others. Started kicking over other kids’ sandcastles, breaking other kids’ toys, because you can’t be bothered building your own, because you think that being threatening somehow makes you powerful or important. You were a schoolyard bully trying to make up for the fact you can’t make a positive difference by contenting yourself with a negative one, and now? Now you’re just an addict. You don’t scare me, so it’s a waste of time to try.”

That last part was a lie, of course, and they both knew it. Jude raised her eyebrows. “I don’t?” She made a grab for his hand, still covering the locket on the table, and he drew back, hoping he managed to hide the brief stab of terror before it showed on his face.

“No. You don’t. So if you’re done posturing, maybe we should talk about why you’re so keen to have this locket, and why you’re going to help us take down the Circus.”

“I already told you, I’m not taking down the Circus for a locket.”

“No, you’re going to take down the Circus for Agnes. You do want to see her again, right? You’re all awaiting her return, waiting to build up enough power, and while most of your congregation would be pushing it to last long enough, you’re fairly young for… the kind of thing you are. You can probably keep your flame alive for a good long while yet and scour the world by her side. But not if the Circus get to it first.”

“Mmm. Perhaps. But your people are so keen to fight the Circus; maybe we should just let the two of you tear each other apart, to even greater destruction.”

“You want to sit back and watch while we wreak havoc? A little backwards, don’t you think?”

“Ha, perhaps.”

“Jude, you’ve met Jon. He’s no Gertrude. Do you honestly think he has a chance against a real challenge? As fun as it might be to watch Monsterboss get his arse kicked by evil clowns, if you’re banking the fate of the world on his competence – ”

“True; he is kind of pathetic. I’ll suggest it to the others, but I can’t promise anything. Now, my locket?”

“I’m not giving you this in exchange for an ‘I’ll think about it’. I’m going to need a token of good faith.”

She rolled her eyes. “What else could you possibly want?”

“Why, knowledge, obviously.” Tim smiled. “You’re going to tell me where the ritual site is.”

“Why would I know something like that?”

“Still posturing? Come on, Jude. Where is it?”

“Seriously, I don’t know.”

“Huh. Guess I can destroy this, then.” He stood up, careful to jump back out of the way of her grab, knowing she could just roast him if she chose and the only thing stopping her was that she didn’t want to damage the hair in that fucking locket. _Why had this seemed like a good plan, again_?

“I don’t know where it is,” she repeated. “But it’s at some kind of wax museum, I think. Or has something to do with waxworks.”

“Good enough.” Tim tossed her the locket. “Be seeing you at the end of the world, Jude.”

“Not if I incinerate you first.”

Tim forced himself to laugh easily at that, like it was a joke and not a threat, and got the hell out of there.

Well. He had what he’d come for – a wax museum. Sasha could probably do something with that. If he was lucky, they might have a handful of psychopathic arsonists, too, but he didn’t really trust Jude’s congregation to be able to keep on task long enough to be useful, or agree on anything in a span shorter than 2 months.

But the ritual site information was a good trade, for a locket.

Now he just needed to deal with Mary.

\------------------

  
  


Colleen McKenzie shifted her weight from one foot to another and wondered, not for the first time, how she’d gotten here in life.

Life used to seem boundless, full of opportunities, but somehow she was in her mid-20s behind the counter of a coffee shop, the same as she had been yesterday, the same as she would be tomorrow, and she couldn’t really remember choosing to be here. Oh; she’d chosen to go to school, she’d chosen to move out of home, she’d chosen to get an apartment, she’d chosen to take a job that could pay her rent. But none of those things had really felt like choices, when she’d done them. They’d been things that had happened to her, and now she was… here. Behind the counter of a coffee shop.

A young man walked in. Short, brown hair, handsome-ish in a way, except for the reluctant and vaguely apprehensive look on his face. Colleen sympathised; she felt that way every day when she had to come to work. She pulled on her Customer Service Smile.

“What can I get you today?” she chirped.

“The usual, please, Colleen,” he said tiredly. Then, at the look of confusion that crossed her face, he grinned widely. “What’s wrong, Colleen? You don’t remember what your friend Dale drinks?”

Of course she knew what Dale drank. Dale had been coming by three times a week since before Colleen started. But the man in front of her wasn’t Dale; he didn’t look or sound anything like him, even if he seemed to be wearing Dale’s favourite shirt. Colleen glanced at the Friends of the Shop board, where a lot of the regulars smiled out of photos, looking for the one of Dale… no, this man. Grinning back at her over a frappacino.

She looked back at him. He was still watching her, his grin wide and predatory.

With trembling hands, she made him Dale’s regular frappacino.

The man who wasn’t Dale sat at Dale’s usual corner table, but he didn’t pull out a book like Dale usually did. He looked nervous, keeping an eye on the door. Within the minute, a woman walked in, walked straight past the counter without ordering anything, and sat opposite him.

“What do you want?” ‘Dale’ asked.

“What do I want? You’re the one who called me here.”

“Heh.”

“You’re not happy.”

“You bound me to a table!”

“That sounds like something you should take up with Dekker or Fielding.”

“Yeah, well, they’re both dead, so…”

“And so is the table. So the situation is resolved. You didn’t call me here to complain about tables.”

“No.”

“You called me here to tell me something.”

“Yeah.” He sipped his drink. “I was at the Magnus Institute.”

“An unusual choice. Did you have a good time?”

“No!” He screwed his face up in what struck Colleen as a petulant and childish manner. “I got lost in a tunnel network and had to eat this old tramp to find the way out. And he was _boring_. No friends or family to speak of. Only cared about books. But he did know a lot about books. You know, the weird ones.” He paused, looked at the woman like he was expecting some kind of response, but she said nothing. So he continued. “He knew enough about the tunnels to get out, even though they were so confusing, because he’d been down there for years. Hiding, mostly, but he had plenty of places to hide. He’d chosen that place because he had a suspicion that there might be a powerful ancient library down there, one with books more powerful than anything he’d come across before. That’s what I came to tell you.”

The woman cocked her head. “Why would you tell me this?”

“Because… well, he only really cared about the books, but he knew there was more. He thought there were… other versions of power, connected to the library. He thought there were trees.”

“Trees?”

“Apple trees. He didn’t know much about them. I’ve forgotten most of it now. But he knew that the library had the trees, and the trees, last he knew, had belonged to the Spider. So I thought you should know.”

“Hmm. And now I know.”

“Yeah. So can I leave?”

“I wasn’t stopping you.”

The man who wasn’t Dale bolted out of the shop, leaving his barely-touched frappacino. The woman just sat there, in the otherwise empty shop, staring contemplatively at a cobweb in the corner.

Eventually, Colleen worked up the courage to walk over and pick up the abandoned coffee. The woman focused suddenly on her with a gaze that Colleen could only describe as… hungry.

“Help me with something in my car,” she said.

Colleen swallowed. “Will it take long?”

“No.” The woman smiled. “It won’t take very long at all.”

Colleen took a few steps towards the exit, before the woman said, “You should close up the shop, first. If would be a shame to leave a mess for the morning crew.”

“Yeah.” It was an hour early, but Colleen closed up. She wiped down counters, turned off appliances, set the coffee machine to its cleaning cycle. She calmly locked the door, and followed the woman down the street.

It was still a fairly busy street. She could run off in some other direction, or get someone’s attention. She could choose to do so many things other than follow the woman, step by step, to her next destination. Except… she knew she couldn’t. Colleen wasn’t the sort of person who made choices. She did a lot of things that had felt like choices at the time, but come to think of it, hadn’t they just been reactions to the next circumstance, moving through the motions of the next thing she was supposed to do with her life? Everything about her history suggested that Colleen couldn’t make her own choices. If she’d ever had the ability to do so, it had atrophied long ago.

So she didn’t try.


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie makes a choice. So does Elias.

Melanie couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t the nightmares that used to keep her up, with Sarah re-stapling her arm while _he_ stared at her, drinking in the scene. Those had stopped when she’d signed up at the Institute, and in a way she was glad she’d gotten information in the order she had, because if she’d found out that Jon had legitimate spooky powers instead of being a figment of her imagination while she was still having the nightmares, well, things probably would have gone badly. No; she couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t stop thinking about Mary.

Her coworker was a legit monster. Not a ghost, although she supposed that ghosts were a subset of the same thing, or at least a similar thing, scars left by fear or whatever, but… but Mary, who scowled her way through bad ice cream flavours in an attempt to find Her Favourite Flavour, who always insisted that Melanie needed to step away from the keyboard and drink water when the typing started to give her a headache, who had laughed along with her when she suggested ditching the Institute and going ghost hunting together… was a, an incarnation of fear, or whatever.

Melanie wasn’t really sure what to feel about that.

It wasn’t like Mary was the only monster she’d worked with. There’d been Sarah Baldwin, of course, and Jon and Elias probably counted. If anything, Mary was remarkable for being the only monster she’d worked with who wasn’t a massive dick. And everyone had kept the information from her, treating her like a fucking child, because they ‘weren’t sure how she’d react’. Just, just giving her the information she needed to be useful to them, leading her around the nose like…

Ugh. She hated that Elias had taken advantage of her ignorance to manipulate and trap her. She didn’t need this bullshit from her coworkers, too. And they’d all been in on it, except presumably Mary, so the ‘monster’ was also the only person who hadn’t been lying to her.

And now Tim was going to kill her, wasn’t he? He was going to kill Mary. Everyone had been edgy about it, let him brush off questions, saying he was handling it, but the archives crew always worked as a team. There was only one reason why everyone would be so willing to let Tim handle something so dangerous alone – they didn’t want to be involved in what he had to do. What he seemed _eager_ to do. And Mary had straight-up admitted that she’d kill them to stop them from saving the world, if she had to, so what other response was there to that, really?

She’d admitted it through tears, pleading with them not to force her to do it, before explaining that she didn’t want the world to end, either. But it was going to, so she had to save it from being ended by someone else.

No. Fuck this. Fuck this whole thing. Melanie had been researching ghosts long enough to know that ‘oooh spooky monster bad’ was a lazy take, and she wasn’t standing by letting that arsehole kill Mary just because it was an easy answer. She’d crawled through a blood-soaked traincar and been shot by a ghost, she was NOT scared of some tastefully scarred Ambercrombie & Fitch model with hard-on for monster killing.

Melanie got up, pulled on the first moderately clean clothes she found in the pile on her floor, and started loading up the Ghost Hunt UK van.

Fifteen minutes later, she was parked outside Mary’s house. After a quick look around to make sure that Tim wasn’t about, she knocked on the door, and was relieved when Mary answered, dressed in pale pink pyjamas and holding a fuzzy yellow teddy bear like she’d stepped out of a magazine ad. She smiled brightly when she saw Melanie.

“Hi, Melanie! Would you like a cup of tea?”

 _How did I not realise how weird she is?_ Melanie wondered, but shrugged the thought off. “No. I think you should pack a bag with whatever you need and come with me in the van. I promised to show you a ghost, right? So let’s go find a ghost.”

“You need sleep. We have work in – ”

“We shouldn’t go to work for awhile. We can just drive… away from here, until we… figure things out. I don’t think you’re safe here, Mary.”

“And friends should try to keep each other safe,” Mary said with a nod. “Alright. But we can’t not go to work. We can’t leave the Institute.”

“Or we’ll get sick, I know. Probably die eventually.” _At least, I will. Does any of that apply to you?_ “But not right away, and that gives us time.”

Mary nodded again and went inside to pack a bag. Melanie waited in the van.

Well, she supposed the other assistants had been right, in a way. They probably wouldn’t have predicted what she’d do when she found out about Mary.

\---------------

  
  


Elias locked the door to his office and drew the shades before withdrawing _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ from his desk and turning it over and over in his hands.

The book bothered him. It bothered him a lot. Not because of its contents – the unsuspecting employee he’d tested it on had revealed it to be a fairly pedestrian artefact aligned with the Buried, conveniently providing his own burial and saving Elias the bother of hiding another body – but because of where he’d found it. Just sitting there, in one of the tunnels.

 _His_ tunnels.

It wasn’t unusual for the singing stones to turn up wherever they pleased, of course; they were, by nature, uncontainable outside the circle. But he’d never had one show up in the tunnels before. Never so close. There were, to his mind, two possible explanations.

Perhaps his control over The Library was slipping. According to The Library’s own books, or at least as much of them as he’d dared to read to learn enough to control it, it could be loosely divided into three parts that the books insisted on archaically referring to as the Seer, the Circle, and the Singing Stones. Elias supposed that these names were because The Library predated the written word, and the Stones taking the form of books was probably a more recent development, but since the text he’d read translated to the reader’s language anyway he wasn’t sure why it couldn’t translate to less fanciful terms. Anyway. The Circle, the location of The Library, the zone of stability and control, was what mattered; Archivists and books were mobile, but so long as he had the location wrapped up in the power of the Panopticon, he had influence over the whole system. The Circle was a sort of centre of gravity, its location determined not just by ideas on what and where a library _should be_ , but by the location of the other parts, which was why the heavy central tomes that he’d taken from Von Closen, so much denser with power than these trivial strays, could never be allowed to leave The Library itself. And, like a centre of gravity, its location influenced the parts that created it, tying the Archivist to the Institute, and creating a zone of stability where the books, when gathered within, couldn’t leave of their own accord. And couldn’t appear of their own accord, either.

But the Seven Lamps of Architecture had shown up, worryingly close to The Library itself. If it had found its own way there… well. He would need to experiment, need to determine how unstable his control was and what to do about it. He couldn’t afford to lose The Library at this time. Not when he was _so close_. It had never before been so critical to maintain control of the Archivist.

The other possibility was that the book had not shown up on its own. Which meant that somebody had brought it there. Which was worse.

It was possible that that Distortion was running amok, trying to make him paranoid, but he didn’t think so. It wasn’t the sort of creature to have any interest in the books, and it shouldn’t know about The Library, although he supposed that if it was still hanging about the Institute it might have followed him down without him noticing. He doubted it, though; that kind of methodical patience wasn’t in the nature of such beings. Besides, a book that controlled earth like this, down in the ever-changing tunnels… had someone gone down there, specifically, on purpose? The Buried had always been a little… well. He still remembered that digger, who’d marched into the Archives to make a statement declaring he knew what was buried beneath them and then tried to dig through the office floor with his bare hands. Perhaps encasing The Library in stone and earth, even in such a central place of power for the Beholding, carried risks.

But if someone had been searching down there, they wouldn’t have left the book behind, would they? There’d been no body, no blood, no piles of ruined earth to suggest that the user had inadvertently buried themselves. Which meant that the book probably had shown up on its own, and he needed to be more careful of his control with The Library.

Or he needed to be faster with preparing his Archivist. Who would need a challenge or two to encourage him to increase his power before facing the Unknowing. And who would, sooner or later, need to face the Buried. He’d been planning to call in some favours for this sort of thing, but relying on others was dangerous, and when such a perfect opportunity fell into one’s hands...

Elias had some planning to do.


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has a plan, Martin has a theory.

The thing that really annoyed Sasha about being tricked into lifelong service to an ancient evil fear god in a role with a notoriously high death rate was how bad the Institute was at actually doing its job. Oh, sure the whole research institute front for collecting statements had probably seemed wonderfully clever in the 1800s, but times had changed and the Institute hadn’t. They could be spreading so much more fear of Beholding than they were! Elias could see stuff and had wealthy patrons, so where were the CCTV cameras on every street of every major English city, legislated for by bribed and blackmailed politicians? They lived in the age of social media and call-out culture; why wasn’t anybody capitalising on that, pushing for total personal transparency and building up some real fear of having people’s long-forgotten mistakes rediscovered, distributed everywhere, and used to ruin their lives? People were _terrified_ of that, and you didn’t even need to waste time and energy being all spooky about it! There were entire subgenres of science fiction specifically about the horrible consequences of the loss of privacy, mass surveillance, and control of information on a mass scale, the Institute had the means to enact most of those things, and they just… didn’t. Were they supposed to be feeding an entity of voyeuristic terror, or sit around an old building picking up the scraps of other fears? Either Sasha had badly misunderstood the entire purpose of the Institute, or two hundred years’ worth of Institute heads had been woefully incompetent and turned her workplace into a supernatural embarrassment. And both of those things annoyed her on principle. Of course it was a good thing that the servants of the Observing who were actually there of their own volition were apparently all incompetent and England wasn’t under their terrifying thrall, but if you’re going to do a job you should at least do it well.

Point was, had the Institute been run properly and made the kind of societal changes that a _sensible_ evil head of an Eye temple would have made, it wouldn’t be taking her so long to track down fucking wax museums. It’d be like… a single database search. Find some known Stranger followers and run their faces through facial recognition until you got lucky with one that kept the same face for long enough. Job done.

She’d found seven wax museums in England that were suspiciously abandoned, closed for maintenance, or otherwise might be being prepped for an apocalypse, four of which were probably big enough and only one of which was in London. Of course ‘probably big enough’ was a guess, and they didn’t know how long the Circus needed to prepare their ritual site, and…

Well, it was a start. They’d have to go and scout out the locations. On their feet. Like pre-internet barbarians.

She got into the office early, as they usually did, to have a chance to talk and work before their unfailingly punctual monster colleague showed up. Tim was already there, feet up on his desk, reading a book about circuses. The room was pretty crowded with so many assistants, and Sasha couldn’t help but notice that there was even less space than usual, that with the giant safe that had apparently been installed in one corner overnight.

“Uh, Tim… why do we have a safe?”

“To keep things all locked up and secure.”

“What kinds of things do we need to secure in an archive?”

“Monsters.”

Sasha looked at the safe. She looked at Mary’s not-yet-occupied desk. She looked at Tim.

“You _cannot_ be serious.”

Tim shrugged. “It should work. That safe’s fire-proof, gas-proof, the lock mechanism’s protected and unpickable from the inside, and it can withstand the weight of a steamroller. I’m ninety nine per cent sure it should be able to hold her.”

“And if it can’t?”

Tim reached under his desk and pulled out something. Sasha stared.

“Tim, is that a fucking welder??”

“Don’t tell Monsterboss. You know what he’s like about ignition sources in the archives. But if she can get through a safe encased in sheet metal, we were fucked from the get-go and none of this mattered anyway.” He put the welder away.

“Well, that’s, um… practical,” Sasha allowed.

Just then, Martin came in, carrying a large cardboard box. “Did you kill her?”

“Nope.”

“He’s going to lock her in a safe,” Sasha said.

“Oh.” He glanced at the safe. “Good. I was a bit worried.”

“You don’t owe her anything, you know,” Tim said. “She should die.”

“She hasn’t done anything.”

“That we know of. I bet she’s killed people before, before she came here. And she’ll kill more.”

“We don’t know that! You should at least find stuff like that out instead of just making assumptions based on what people are, when they can’t help it.”

“I’m not about to haul off and attack Monsterboss, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Martin flushed. “That isn’t… I wasn’t even thinking about… I mean, just on _principle_.”

“Mmm. Can’t help but notice that you thought I might kill her, but didn’t say anything yesterday. So you can’t be that against the idea.”

Martin coloured further. “Yesterday was just very stressful,” he said. “But you’re definitely not going to kill her?”

“I don’t think I can. Safer to use the safe.”

“Good. Even if you don’t like what she is, she _is_ a major asset.”

Tim frowned. “How?”

“After we foil the Unknowing, she’s going to want to keep the world together long enough to try again. If we do it right, that should be… generations away. I don’t know how many more apocalypses we need to foil, but having a shapeshifter in our corner who’s invested in stopping them is probably not going to hurt.”

“Also,” Sasha added, “she’s really fast at typing, and her not being able to read the statements is doing wonders for getting all this digitised.”

“Hmm. Well, if either of you wake up one morning to find she’s sold you to a skin-eating clown, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Martin said, heading for Jon’s office.

“What do you think’s in that box?” Sasha asked.

“Who cares?” Tim shrugged turning back to his box. “Go ask him. Doubt it’s a secret.”

“Yeah, well, when you’re done reading, we’ve got some wax museums to scout today. Moderate probability of evil clowns.”

Tim immediately snapped the book shut. “Oh, Sasha. You always know just the right thing to say.”

\-------------------

  
  


Martin had, in the end, decided to relocate his planning wall to the archives. It would be better to actually be able to use it during work hours. But setting it up somewhere where researchers or members of the public might see it could cause some awkward situations, so he’d decided to set it up in the tunnels.

He knew that Jon, Sasha and Tim had all explored the tunnels a little on their own; he’d seen Jon emerge from his office a couple of times when he hadn’t gone in using the door, and he was pretty sure Tim used them when he wanted to get around without talking to anyone, but Martin tended to steer clear of them. The last time he’d been in the tunnels hadn’t gone all that great. So he made sure to set up in a little alcove close to the stairs he’d descended, where they were in full view and he couldn’t possibly get lost. So long as Tim didn’t get it into his head to mess up Martin’s map for a prank, that should be fine.

There were more spiders in the tunnel than Martin remembered. It wasn’t hard to figure out why; nobody had made a massive effort to clean the tunnels of worms after the Prentiss attack, and if you introduce a food source in the form of thousands of worm carcasses… things were going to get bad for the spiders when the dead worms ran out, though. Martin hoped that, when they made their exodus in search of somewhere with more food, they didn’t do it through Jon’s office, or at least did it when Jon was out.

Reconstructing his concept map was easy; as he pulled each card out of the box, he could remember what they had been attached to, and why. He had to hang up an old sheet to pin them to, since nothing was going to stick to the dusty, uneven cave walls without far more effort than it was worth, but that was simple enough. He had his fourteen fears lined up down one side and was in the process of trying to fit as much of the Unknowing map as possible on the wall when he heard someone approaching behind him.

“Uh, hi, Elias. What are you… do you need me for something?”

“Oh, I just wanted to see how everyone was doing. What with saving the world.” His eyes flicked over the wall of notes and rested, just for a moment on the Observing card on Martin’s Potential Apocalypse Fear List, crossed out with thick black lines. “The Unknowing is approaching. Do you… have a plan?”

“We’re working on it,” Martin said.

“Hmm. Well, I have full faith in you all. Good luck.”

Then he turned and left – not, Martin noticed, through the trapdoor. He must have another exit.

Martin knew he should get back to building his Unknowing map, but he couldn’t help but speculate on the implications of this. Elias wasn’t one to come down to the archives all that often, preferring to communicate via email and soforth. The last time he’d gone out of his way to come down had been… when Tim was making a nuisance of himself to get fired, Martin was pretty sure. And he’d loitered a lot when Mary had first started.

And now he was coming to see Martin in the tunnels, for no apparent reason.

With what martin knew of Elias’ powers, which wasn’t all that much, the obvious conclusion was that he came down for a closer look, so to speak; a chance to look in Tim’s head or whatever, see what he’d been planning. So had he come down to look in Martin’s? Did he think Martin was planning something dangerous? He wasn’t, although if he was getting Elias’ attention then it was probably best to leave his How To Defeat Elias exercise off the board altogether, in case Elias wondered what those cards were.

But Elias hadn’t shown that much interest in Martin. His eyes had gone straight to Martin’s Unknowing concept map. Had that been what he wanted to see? He’d wanted to see what Martin was doing?

But he could see things at a distance, right? He’d seen Jon get kidnapped, until he’d been thrown in the van that was shielded from Elias’ sight. So he didn’t need to physically come down to see what Martin was doing. If he needed a clearer view, or whatever, he’d at least have waited until Martin had finished building the map.

A spider crawled past, dragging half a dead worm.

Elias had been as taken by surprise as any of them by the Prentiss attack. The worms had been building their strength and numbers for weeks before Jon and Sasha discovered them, and Elias had had no idea. And now, Martin had gone into the tunnels with a box of stuff, and within half an hour Elias had turned up to see what he was doing.

Were the tunnels shielded from him, like Breekon and Hope’s van? Could he not see into the tunnels?

Useful if true. Martin would want a bit more evidence before relying on it, though.

He turned back to the task at hand.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Girl time!

The pizza boy took a step back and practically shoved the box into Mary’s hands.

“Have a nice day!” she called after him as he bolted to his car.

Melanie finished texting her coworkers that she was fine, they didn’t have to panic, she’d been chasing up some leads and she didn’t know where Mary was, before popping the phone open to take the battery out. She didn’t know how Sasha’s phone tracking hacker abilities worked and she wasn’t taking any chances. “You did that on purpose,” she chided Mary, as the pizza box was placed on the motel bed in front of her.

“Did what?”

“Scared him. I know you can smile properly. And your speech is a little off sometimes, but not like _that_.”

“I didn’t hurt him,” she said defensively.

“Just ruined his night with a terrifying encounter?”

“You ruined his night by ordering a pizza to be delivered in the rain because you didn’t want to have to go into the rain yourself.”

“… Okay, fair point.” Melanie toasted her with a slice of pizza in concession and took a bite out of it. “Is it something you like, have to do?”

“What?”

“Being a fear monster, or whatever. Do you have to scare people to… feed, or whatever?”

“I don’t actually know.”

“You don’t _know_?”

“It’s not something I’ve ever, you know, not done!” Mary said defensively. “I only learned to be any good at seeming human recently, and people can still tell eventually. It’s always happened around me, so how would I know if I needed it or not?”

“Is it something you like doing, then? Is it fun?”

“I don’t know. I think so? I’m still learning about ‘fun’. Is that thing you do yo your hair all the time fun?”

“What thing – ?” Melanie glanced at her non-pizza-holding hand, which was entwined in her hair, absently wrapping it around her finger. She put her hand down. “I don’t know. I just do it. Is that what being scary is like?”

“I don’t know.” Mary picked up a slice of pizza and inspected it carefully. “I don’t know what the… the different… I’m still building my, myself. I don’t usually go this… deep. I don’t usually have to be someone this… much. It’s easy for you, getting to just wake up and be a person and know all about it.”

Melanie laughed. “Is that what you think being a human is like? You think any of us ever know what the hell we’re doing?”

“You all seem pretty confident about who you are.”

“That’s an act. Nobody out there has any fucking clue. We might not have as much of a, a blank slate as you, but I’m starting to think a lot of that is just because we only get one shot. We can’t ditch the mask for another one, so we have no choice but to get entrenched.”

“No, no; you have a… um…” Mary frowned at her pizza, thinking. “I read some psychology books, right, and you guys have an inherent assumption that you’re a person. The way your mind works is built on the idea that you exist, and that the mask you wear is the thing behind it, and that you’re distinct for the world, like the label ‘me’ means something. That’s an obvious lie, but it’s like… pushed so far into your brains that most of you can’t ditch it without effort, and you can’t ditch it for very long. And it being gone is terrifying because it’s the entire basis of how your thoughts work. So even if you don’t know the details of what sort of person you are, you always start from assuming you’re a person, which gives you kind of a head start. I have to make that assumption for myself and then try to remember it as I puzzle through, even though I know it’s a lie, and that… slows things down.”

“Maybe it’s your brain that’s lying to you.”

“What?”

“Maybe, it’s not us assuming we have an identity that’s the lie. Maybe the lie is in your assumption that you don’t. Like… what was your name, before you were Mary?”

“Uh, Jan.”

“Right. So you were Jan, and then you all… headed out into the world, or whatever, and you chose to go somewhere where you’d have more space and freedom to be Mary. You knew you were going to be reluctant when it was time not to be Mary, right? So, that must have come from your experience with Jan. And others, if there were others. And the way you responded to it, I’m guessing that that makes you different to your… your siblings, right? Or at least you assumed it would, maybe you all feel that, but _the point is_. There are thoughts or feelings or inclinations or whatever that are a part of you, and not necessarily a part of them, and aren’t a part of whatever name or face you happen to be wearing at the time. That’s you. That’s an identity.”

“Maybe? I don’t… I don’t really see…”

“What, having trouble conceiving of it? Just as a human might have trouble conceiving of not having one? If our minds can be based on a lie, so can yours. Why assume ours are wrong?”

“You know, I think you might be right. I mean, I’m a figment of your imagination, so – ”

“Whoah. Hold up. What do you mean, I figment of my imagination? Because if you tell me I’ve had some kind of psychotic break and you’re some weird hallucination I – ?”

“No, that’s not… I meant of humanity’s imagination. I’ve been digitising a lot of statements and stuff and… I’m not an expert in how any of this works, but it’s pretty obvious that, that what we are is dependent on what you are. What you fear. My psychology is built on your psychology, maybe as a species, maybe as a culture, maybe just the people I happen to encounter… I don’t know. But… okay, look, the point is. Your psychology is built on whatever helped your ancestors survive and reproduce; not what’s true or false, but what’s useful, so there are probably lies in there. But mine is built on the holes in yours, and that’s another degree of separation. Neither of us have any claim to truth, but yours is more likely to be closer. I think.”

Melanie stared. “A few days ago I watched you eat ice cream, get brain freeze, and then keep eating through the freeze for like thirty minutes.”

“I had a limited amount of time to try as many flavours as possible. What’s your point?”

“My point is, when did you become a fucking philosopher?”

Mary laughed. “I _read_.”

“I guess you do. But if we’re going to be talking deep fundamental truths, I need alcohol, and I’m not going out in the rain to buy any.”

“I can get – ”

“Oh no, the night time petrol station employees have enough weird stories without you freaking them out with a literal monster encounter. So, no fundamental truths.”

“Fine. Why are we here?”

“Mary, I literally just said – ”

“You know what I mean. You took me on this ghost finding trip because you said I was in danger. Were our friends going to kill me?”

“I don’t know. I thought… I thought they might.”

“Because of the Unknowing.”

“Yes.”

“Do you ant the Unknowing to happen?”

“Definitely not.”

“Then why haven’t you tried to kill me?”

“Aside from the fact that there’s no chance I could, you mean?”

“Yes, aside from that.”

Melanie sighed. She certainly didn’t want to admit the truth – her decision hadn’t been based in any faith in Mary, so much as it had been because she was pissed off at everyone except Mary. Probably not a great basis for making fate-of-the-world decisions. “This shouldn’t have to be our problem,” she snapped. “I’m a ghost hunter who took an archiving job, I didn’t sign up for all this apocalypse bullshit. At least you knew what you were getting into.”

“Not really. I knew about the Eye and the Unknowing, and I expected Elias to be more of a danger to me, but I didn’t know about friends. I didn’t know I was going to have to deal with friends who couldn’t be friends because we would have to hurt each other. It’s easier for you humans,not having to deal with that.”

Melanie stared. “Wow, you really don’t get us at all. You think humans don’t go through that kind of thing? Have you read, watched or listened to… any drama, ever? Like, uh… Shakespeare? Any kind of, um, fantasy novel? Any soap operas?”

“I watched some horror movies with Martin.”

“But otherwise?”

She shook her head.

“You said you read?”

“Only real things. I was trying to figure out humans.”

“Oh, then you absolutely have to read fiction. Fiction is how humans teach each other to be human. It gives us frameworks for understanding and feeling and experiencing things that are safe and clear, because they’re fake. Cancel ghost hunting tomorrow; that can wait. Tomorrow, we are going to a bookshop.”


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls' road trip continues.

Melanie didn’t have that much money, but Mary did. Apparently she bought very little, aside from her lunch food experiments; when Melanie asked whether she had rent or anything, she just looked at her blankly. So they were able to buy plenty of books.

Melanie had spent half the night on the motel wifi looking at reviews for various books to figure out what they should get. At first, she’d considered just getting books with dramatic conflicting loyalties where everyone ultimately ended up friends, but… wouldn’t that just be treating Mary the way that Melanie’s coworkers had been treating Melanie? So she threw some tragedies in, too.

She still wasn’t sure what she was trying to do, exactly. Just… distract Mary until the Unknowing? That wasn’t going to work. If the fate of the world was at stake, Melanie was going to have to help save it. And Mary would surely try to stop her.

Mary wasn’t the only one who was conflicted. At some point, they were both going to have to choose each other, or their world.

And there really was no contest there.

\-------------------

  
  


Jon stared at his computer screen and tried not to fall asleep. He had the urge to just go out and track down some Stranger servant, maybe swing by that weird taxidermy place, and just ask them where the ritual site was. However, as the rest of the team had pointed out:

1\. Mary hadn’t known where the site was, and there was no guarantee that any randomly found one would either.

2\. Even if they did, the questioning would tip off the Circus that they knew where the site was, losing them the potential element of surprise.

3\. Do you have a deathwish, Jon, you stupid fucking idiot. Do you have a deathwish. Those guys JUST kidnapped you for an entire month as easy as breathing. None of us, least of you, have the resources or strength or fighting skills to stand up to a bunch of monsters who want to kill you. What are you going to do, ‘ask’ them to death. How did that go for you last time. Are you trying to die. Just sit down and wait for the footage.

He had to admit, they had some good points. Which was why his assistants – minus Melanie and, of course, Mary – were out kind of skirting the area around various wax museums Sasha had flagged wearing hidden cameras, and sending him the footage, in the hope he’d recognise one of his kidnappers.

It was a long shot, but everyone was hoping not to have to actually break into the museums until they absolutely had to. So Jon (who’d be far too recogniseable walking around the streets, and who Martin had gotten a little protective of since the whole kidnapping thing) was resigned to sitting in his office, combing through street footage for vaguely familiar faces.

He vaguely recalled being the boss here. In theory. He used to tell his assistants what to do, and they’d do it.

Whatever happened to that?

\-------------------

  
  


Tim was at the post office when Jon called him.

“What’s up?”

“The museum in Yarmouth. Louis Toussad’s House of Wax? Two people loitering out the front on your camera feed. They weren’t people.”

“Yarmouth? Ha, Martin was way off. Alright, we’ll take a closer look tonight.”

‘Try not to – ”

“I’m not an idiot.” Tim hung up. He took the package he’d come for from the lady at the counter, thanked her, and left.

The envelope didn’t have a return name or address, but it was blackened and singed a little at the corners. Subtle, Jude. He tore it open, finding a key, an address, and a license plate number.

A car? It had to be stolen, right? No way this wasn’t stolen. It was also clear on the other side of London, probably just to be inconvenient. There was a chance she was just trying to get him arrested or something, but he doubted it. If jude wanted to inconvenience him, she would’ve just burned hs house down or something.

The key turned out not to belong to a car. It belonged to a van. A van completely packed with boxes of… something.

It took a bit of inspection, some reading of labels, and hasty googling for Tim to realise what he was looking at.

Well, he didn’t go to a Desolation cult for subtle, he supposed.

\-----------------------

  
  


Sasha frowned at her phone. There must be something wrong with the reception, or the speaker, or something, because there was no way that Tim had just told her what she thought he’s told her.

“Sorry, what?”

“C4. A van of it.”

“Which you got from that crazy wax cultist?”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you talking to – more important, why are you telling me this over the _phone_? You know people can listen into this, right?”

“The only people we’ve found spying on us so far can see whatever they want at any time, apparently, or ask unanswerable questions, and they want to save the world as much as we do, so…”

“Well if Jude mailed you something and those couriers grabbed Jon from his house, I’d say we probably have a lot more spies to worry about. They know where we live, at least.”

“The devils, they can use a phone book!”

“Yeah, yeah; shut up. Just saying, we should discuss this in person.”

“Do you know how to use C4, Sasha?”

“… What? No! Why would I know something like that?”

“I always kind of assumed you were some kind of government superspy or something with your mad hacking skillz.”

“Never pronounce ‘skills’ with a z again.”

“You can’t prove it had a z. We’re talking in an auditory medium.”

“The z was in your tone, Tim. And no, being able to guess your email password or get into someone’s phone doesn’t make me a demolitions expert.”

“Can you like, google it? On the dark web or whatever?”

“I’m hanging up now.”

She did. Jesus. She kind of wished she did know a demolitions expert, just to see the look on Tim’s face, but while her social circle might include occasional thieves and con artists (difficult to entirely avoid in hacking circles) it didn’t include any terrorists or, contrary to Tim’s wild fantasies, government superspies.

Just then, Martin handed her a cup of tea. “You look annoyed. Does that mean Tim called?”

“Yeah. Ha, do _you_ know anyone who can use C4?”

“Probably.”

Sasha blinked. “What?”

“Well, Caitlyn – you know Caitlyn from accounting? – married Peter last year, and he’s a construction worker. They do demolitions in construction work so he probably knows someone who knows about it. More importantly, why do you want someone who can use C4? Where did you get C4? What are you going to blow up?”

“Tim needs someone who can use C4, because he got a van full of it from Jude Perry, and we’re going to blow up Louis Toussad’s House of Wax, which is the ritual site, mid-Unknowing.”

Martin stared. “I was… I was in the break room for ten minutes! What the hell did I miss? Did we find Melanie and Mary, too, and I just missed it?”

“Melanie said she was fine – ”

“She _texted_ that she was fine and turned her phone off. That means nothing. Jane texted Jon with my phone for 2 weeks when she trapped me in my apartment. If Mary has Melanie,” Martin said, “we need to know.”

“Ever noticed how alliterative the names around here can be sometimes?”

“What?”

“Never mind. If Mary did do something to Melanie, or if someone else has them both, there’s not much we can do to find them. We don’t have phone data, they’re not logging into their facebooks… unless they walk around with some huge sign pointing out who and where they are, we’re not going to get much. We just have to wait until they resurface.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

\-------------------

  
  


Not for the first time, Melanie resolved to paint over the giant GHOST HUNT UK logo on the side of her van sometime soon. She’d changed her hairstyle since GHOST FREAKOUT UK had aired but people still occasionally recognised her, and it had to be the van’s fault.

Although she supposed that if she really, truly cared that much about not being recognised… returning to the haunted traincar that had started it all probably wasn’t her most fantastic idea.

Melanie told herself that it wasn’t fear that was accelerating her pulse as she and Mary helped each other over the fence. It was just adrenaline. She was aware of the danger and her body was preparing her for the potential need to act quickly. She wasn’t _afraid_ , she was just _ready_ , and if that was a bit uncomfortable, well, that was the fault of the traincar, making her feel that way! She grabbed Mary’s wrist and pulled her through the yard.

Getting in had been a lot easier with Mary to distract an inconvenient guard, and Melanie still remembered the security camera layout from last time. They made their way across the yard until she caught the scent of blood on the air. The figures that seemed to be sitting in the rusted skeletons of the trains, just for a moment, figures that were probably just figments of her imagination, didn’t matter so much any more – she knew more about how these things worked, now. Anyway, she was holding the wrist of a literal monster designed to scare her! How dare this place think it could do anything to her?! The memory of the scalpel wound burned across her shoulder; she ignored it, and quickened her pace.

The car was exactly as she remembered. Less unsettling, this time. She almost felt relief as the blood started to run down the wall of the traincar; this here was proof that there was something here, that she hadn’t been hallucinating, and she’d brought a witness. As she watched the man stab the person on the gurney again and again, the scar on her shoulder burned and she wished for nothing more than a scalpel in her own hand to get that bastard back for what he’d done to her. He’d cut her, he’d buried these memories in her brain; he’d been an integral part in her search of other war ghosts, leading her to the Institute, trapping –

Mary was tugging on her arm. “We should go,” she whispered.

She was right, of course. Melanie didn’t want to stick around long enough to be attacked again. Nobody needed a GHOST FREAKOUT UK II.

“So,” Mary said as they left the place behind, “that was a ghost.”

“Yeah. Honestly, I didn’t expect to see it again this time. I thought it might be a bit random, you know? Only showing up sometimes? Otherwise I would’ve thought there’d be more stories about it.”

“Perhaps it does. But of course it was going to show up for you.”

“What does that – ?” but before Melanie could finish her question, she stumbled, fell. Mary caught her.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Just a bit of a dizzy spell.”

“That’s the third one today.”

“Maybe I need to eat more iron.”

“Maybe you need to return to the Institute.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Mm.”

Melanie followed Mary back to the van, not mentioning the other two dizzy spells that Mary hadn’t noticed. She was going to have to return, eventually. But not yet.

Melanie King wasn’t going down without a fight.


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dangerous girls make dangerous decisions.

Daisy had promised not to go after Sims over the dreams. She hadn’t promised to ignore him.

She’d seen too many things over too long a time to be bothered by nightmares, but there was something about its endless recurrence, about him just standing there watching her, about the knowledge that her experience wasn’t private, that really got to her. He was out there doing… something. They always were. And she had to now what it was.

So she’d been spending a fair amount of her spare time keeping an eye on Jonathan Sims.

It wasn’t hard; he barely went anywhere except home and work. She took to lurking in the general area of the Magnus Institute whenever she had the chance and watching for the rare occasions that he left. Even then, he rarely went anywhere except to the bakery on the corner, with the general wariness of someone who’d recently been kidnapped by evil clowns.

So when he left the Institute mid-morning, flanked protectively by three of his assistants, that was a little weird.

They weren’t hard to follow; while the group seemed on the lookout for anyone about to grab Sims, it didn’t seem to occur to them to worry about being followed. They got on the Underground and it was no problem at all for Daisy to get on with the crowd and just wait for their stop.

They were going clear across London, apparently. Daisy was on her lunch break, but she didn’t have any set appointments for the afternoon; no one would care if she was a bit late. When you were the only Sectioned detective, people didn’t want to know what you spent your time doing.

Following them after they left the Underground was a little trickier, on the much sparser street, but not challenging. They only walked a couple of blocks before stopping to surround and inspect a van. Daisy slowly strode past them down the street, on the opposite side of the road, texting the license plate to a friend at the station. She had confirmation of what she’d expected within minutes: the van was stolen.

So Sims’ little team had nicked a van. Why? What was –

Then one of them opened the back, and Daisy had to duck into a shop to avoid anyone seeing the shocked look on her face. She knew C4 when she saw it.

What the hell was that freak planning?!

\--------------------

  
  


“Are you sure, Daisy?”

“I know what plastic explosives look like, Basira.”

“Okay, but if you only glimpsed them… he just doesn’t seem the direct action kind of type, is all I’m saying. I mean, he’s scary as shit, but even in the dreams he just _watches_.”

“Well maybe that’s what his entourage of little freaks is for. We don’t know what they are, yet.”

“True. Did you, you know, put a report in?”

“No. There’s no need to make this complicated.”

“Daisy – ”

“If they’re going to blow people up, Basira, we need to stop it as fast as possible! This has to be bigger than him so I can’t just… just grab him right away, but I don’t have time to report it, then wait a week while it swills through the system only to be handed right back to me with full operational discretion anyway!”

“You could use the backup, is all I’m saying.”

“I’m not scared of Sims. Anyway, I came here.”

“Yeah. Ha. It’ll be a bit of a change from lost cats, I suppose.” Basira looked at Daisy carefully. Was she… alright? She was tired, certainly, and stressed from discovering someone trucking around a bunch of illegal explosives, but even aside from that, she was normally… less keen to get Basira involved in something that was surely going to end permanently for her enemy. Did she hate Sims this much? Or did she just miss Basira this much?

Basira nodded. “Okay. Let’s solve this weird monster terror plot before any innocents get hurt.”

\---------------------

  
  


Melanie’s health only got worse. After a few more days, she couldn’t stand without her legs trembling with the effort. Then it became hard to keep any food down.

“You’re sick,” Mary said firmly. “You’re taking the day on work.”

“They haven’t beaten me yet.”

“So you’re going to sit here and get even sicker, for no reason, before going back to work? I’ll carry you there if I have to.”

“No – you can’t go in, until… until I know what their plan is.”

“Until you know whether they’re going to try to kill me.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you wait much longer, you won’t be able to get to the building without my help.”

“Fine. I’m going in. But first I want to introduce you to… to a friend, somewhere you can lay low for now.” Until the end of the world. God, they were lucky that Mary wasn’t directly involved in the Unknowing; if she’d been a threat to the world, Melanie would have to be on Team: Kill The Monster. But if she could just keep Mary out of the way, well, that should be good enough. Without having to give in to those smug bastards who thought she couldn’t handle the truth, who thought she’d be ‘unpredictable’, even though they were all supposed to be in the same boat.

Ugh, and now she was going to have to go to work and talk to them.

Mary had been watching Melanie drive the van for awhile, so she had no problems getting behind the wheel and following Melanie’s directions. The closer they got to the Institute, the better Melanie felt, but she was definitely still weak when they arrived at Georgie Barker’s house. Melanie ignored the tremble in her knees as she walked up Georgie’s driveway, and the way Mary stood too close, ready to catch her if she fell but clearly knowing better than to offer help.

Melanie’s knock was answered immediately. Georgie took one look at her and practically dragged her inside. “What the hell happened to you, Melanie? Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on. Uh, hi,” she added to Mary, “I’m Georgie. Do you want a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you,” Mary said, lingering on the doorstep – possibly wondering whether it was appropriate to enter without an invitation, or something? – until Melanie grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside with the hand that Georgie wasn’t pulling on, creating a daisy chain of welcoming insistence. Georgie guided – well, pushed – Melanie into a seat, disappeared briefly to put the kettle on, then returned.

“Do I need to call an ambulance or something?” she asked.

“I’m fine. I was just about to head into work, actually.”

“Like hell you are!”

“No, really, it’s fine. I, uh… I need a favour.”

Georgie glanced out the window at the Ghost Hunt UK van. “You need to borrow some equipment or something?”

“No, it’s not about… this is Mary. She needs somewhere to stay for a little while? A few weeks, maybe; I don’t know. There’s some… stuff at work.”

“Stuff that I’m guessing you’re not going to explain.”

“No.” Melanie thought about this. She could cut the conversation off there, and Georgie wouldn’t push it, she knew. Georgie was cool like that. She’d help a friend because they needed help, and while an explanation might be appreciated it wouldn’t be forced, and she drifted through life with the general expectation of being treated the same. A lot like Mary, come to think of it.

But Melanie was asking her to house a monster while she got back to stopping the apocalypse. And while she knew, _knew_ , that Mary was no threat to Georgie, and that Georgie didn’t need to know about the apocalypse stuff, and that explaining wouldn’t help any of them in any way and would just make things worse because it would give Georgie reasons to refuse them… that wasn’t her choice. That was what the rest of the archives had done to her, and she wasn’t a hypocrite. Georgie deserved the information to make her own decision.

“Not before that tea is ready,” she clarified. “After that, yeah. You probably should know everything.”

So Georgie made the tea.

And Melanie explained. She explained about Elias hiring her, about the fears, about the nature of the supernatural. He explained about Jon, and here, Georgie stopped her.

“This Jon. We’re talking about the same Jonathan Sims, right? Fussy guy, pretentious voice, does that thing where he’s always adjusting his shirt cuffs?”

“Yep.”

“He’s an eldritch servant of evil with spooky powers?”

“Technically? So far as I can tell his ‘powers’ involve people just… answering his questions, but nobody tells me anything, so there might be more. Still, not what I’d call spooky or impressive.”

“He is the most annoyingly curious person on the planet. Loves his invasive questions. And he got hired as an archivist? He doesn’t have the degree for that! How did he not immediately realise it was a cover – actually, no, that tracks. I once watched him pour orange juice on his oatmeal and eat the entire bowl without noticing.”

“The Archivist isn’t the weird part of this story.”

“He definitely is, but keep going.”

So she explained the apocalypse.

Georgie stared. She sipped her tea. She thought very hard.

“Well,” she said eventually. “That’s something.”

“That’s what you’ve got to say? ‘That’s something’?”

Georgie shrugged. “I don’t really have much more to add, yeah. So you’re off to your evil Institute to save the world from an even more evil power?”

“Pretty much.”

“And when you get into work you should be able to walk in a straight line and not look like you’re on death’s door?”

“According to Tim, yeah.”

“And there’s nothing I can do with the whole world saving thing, I’m guessing?”

“Only by giving Mary somewhere to stay. This is, um… this is the crux of the issue, here. I understand if you don’t want to help after I explain, but…”

“Just tell me.”

So she did.

Georgie’s expression as she stared at Mary was completely unreadable. Flickers of wariness and disgust followed flashes of curiosity and thoughtfulness until, a good half a minute later, Georgie said in a completely neutral tone, “Okay. You can stay in my spare room for now.” She glared at Melanie. “You owe me big time for this.”

“I won’t forget.”

“And you still owe me for that camera.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good. Now drink your tea and go to work so you feel better.”

Melanie laughed and sipped her tea. She knew she could count on Georgie. She wouldn’t tolerate Mary hanging around forever, but it bought some time.

Who knows? Maybe they’d become great friends.

\--------------

  
  


Georgie watched Melanie drive away, hoping that her condition was good enough that she could actually drive safely. But she had other dangers to worry about.

The monster had headed for the spare room immediately after Melanie had left. Georgie didn’t know what she was doing in there – just sitting around and staring at the walls, probably? – but that suited Georgie’s purposes just fine.

She’d lost one friend to one of these things before. She wasn’t going to lose another.

At least the dead woman had had the consideration to look like a monster. A dead woman surrounded by unresponsive students in a medical lab; hard to mistake that for anything safe. This one was… well, if it served the Stranger, it make sense for it to play nice, get close, right? Georgie wasn’t completely sure she understood the fear thing, but she understood how monsters worked. The last one who’d gotten close had nearly killed her, and not all of her had come back. None of Alex was ever coming back.

If she had Melanie in her spell already, well… Georgie didn’t know what that meant, for Melanie. But waiting longer would only make things worse. So as soon as she was sure Melanie was gone and Mary was in her room, she googled the number for the Magnus Institute, and gave them a call.

“Hello, you’ve called the Magnus Institute; this is Rosie. How may I help you?”

“Uh, hi. I need to speak to someone in the archives?”

“Are you a researcher with us? To access the archives, you need to – ”

“No, no. I, uh, I’m trying to get in contact with Jonathan Sims. The head archivist? It’s kind of important, but I don’t – I mean, I’ve lost his personal number, and it’s kind of an emergency…”

“It’s against protocol for me to transfer personal calls, but… just this once, dear. Don’t tell anybody, and make sure you get his number, alright?”

“Thank you so much.”

The call was transferred. Georgie waited for someone to pick up. Like hell she was letting this happen again.


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias is a rat bastard.

Elias raised his hand automatically to squash the insect crawling across his desk, then froze when he saw it wasn’t an insect; it was a small spider. Hmm. He’d known that his project had the Spider’s support – or at least _a_ Spider’s support; it would probably be a mistake to assume that all children of the Mother of Puppets were united in their purpose – since Jon had walked through his doors, but usually they were rather more subtle. It could, of course, be an ordinary spider, but that was unlikely. He’d seen the things down in the tunnels, his tunnels, infesting what should belong to –

Well. They weren’t near the real tunnels, the area around the Panopticon. Just the fringes around the Institute. So they were probably trying to send him a message, but at least they were being polite about it.

The tiny spider crawled onto the Seven Lamps of Architecture, sitting on his desk.

“You think so?” he asked aloud, although the spider obviously couldn’t reply and quite probably no one could hear him. The Mother of Puppets didn’t tend to… work like that. Honestly, trying to sort out how her children operated tended to give Elias a headache; he was about information, first and foremost, and actually comprehending or connecting it took ordinary human thought and focus. The Spider’s minions were the opposite, building their connections without seeming to care overmuch about observing anything more than the bare minimum to make the web work, treating extraneous information as a distraction rather than an asset. He couldn’t get his head around it, and it somehow made them more difficult to predict than just being able to assume conservatively that your enemy might know everything. Somehow, it gave them a massively advantageous unpredictability without impeding their actual ability to function too much, which was… frustrating. One of the main reasons he tried to keep out of the Spider’s way, or at least felt reassured when their goals seemed to align.

But whatever little puppetmaster (or network thereof) was backing his little venture seemed to be getting bold. He was almost insulted, that anyone would think that this lack of subtlety was required, that he was that stupid. He had a plan; he didn’t need an army of spiders for moral support, or whatever they were hoping to communicate. Still, it did make him much more secure in his plan, going forward. He wasn’t sure Jon was ready yet. It was perfectly possible that Jon would die. But… well. There were a few marks that were hardly going to get safer with time, and the Buried was one of them. If it was going to kill him, better to do so early, before Elias had invested too much.

So he picked up the book, and headed for the tunnels.

\------------------

  
  


“So I checked the text messages we all received and I’m pretty sure that Melanie is fine,” Martin said as he lead Jon down the stairs into the tunnels. “Not certain, but pretty sure. I _think_ she’ll probably keep Mary away from the Institute for as long as she can, but I don’t know where they are, what they’re doing or how long that’ll be, so I think the best bet would be to have Tim in the archives as much as possible in case Mary does show up again, because he’s got the plan to deal with her.”

“By shoving her into a safe.”

“Yeah.”

“Martin, I don’t… I don’t think he’s going to be able to push a shapeshifter into a safe.”

“Well, if he fails, he just needs a good escape route. Tim’s smart enough to take full responsibility for the plan, so if she decides this makes anyone and enemy, it should only be him, and I don’t think she… she’s never been aggressive, you know?”

“That’s true,” Jon said thoughtfully. “She’d either flee or attack, and if he gets out of her sight, she’d probably choose to flee rather than chase him around the Institute. She seems to think of herself as a guest here and wouldn’t want to… offend the Eye.”

“Exactly. So if that happens, Tim can stay in the archives and he’ll be fine. Point is, we don’t have to worry about Mary or Melanie if you have Tim work in the archives as much as possible. Which means that we can focus properly on…” he dramatically pointed his torch at his wall of notecards and string.

Jon skimmed it, wrinkling his nose distastefully at a spider crawling up one side of the sheet. As Martin had expected, Jon hadn’t even noticed most of the spiders – they were mostly on the ceiling, and most people didn’t look up.

“What am I looking at?” Jon asked.

Fair enough. Everyone’s mind worked differently, and Martin hadn’t exactly labelled his strings. He started to relate the key points. “Essentially, our issues are: determining the exact time of the ritual. Arranging for the explosives to be transported to the site – I don’t think we should use Jude’s van since I think it might be stolen and the last thing we want is to get police involved – and set up in advance without the Circus noticing. Finding somebody able and willing to set up the explosives. And, of course, the detonation, which… well.”

“Which has to be done by me,” Jon said, nodding. “Elias is convinced that I should be able to resist the Unknowing’s effects enough to be able to do it during the ritual, so long as I gain enough power beforehand.”

“If we could get an exact time, we could set up everything to timers in advance,” Martin said, and we wouldn’t even have to be there.”

“Even then, I should still go. It’s too important; if something went wrong with the timer, or they were discovered.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just…”

“Think it might be a bad idea to stand in the middle of a building while I collapse it mid-apocalypse ritual?”

“Yeah. Sounds kinda dangerous.”

“I’ll do my best to be outside the building when I push the button, Martin.”

“Hmm. Still doesn’t fill me with confidence. Anyway. Our explosives experts. I’ve made small talk with Peter and I have the names of three construction workers that could probably use this stuff. What I don’t have is any way in hell to convince ordinary people to come blow up a wax museum and not go straight to the police.”

“I might be able to do that. Depending.”

“How? Depending on what?”

Jon shrugged. “Depending on what sort of secrets they have. It’s not… exactly ethical, but…”

“You’re going to blackmail them into saving the world?”

“If I have to.”

“Not many people have secrets big enough for that, but it’s worth a shot. So, the transport – ” Martin stopped as he felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. He looked at Jon. They both prepared to run.

Then they fell, earth and stone crumbling around them.

\-----------------

  
  


Georgie let the call ring out before putting the phone down and swearing quietly. Why was nobody picking up in the archive? Didn’t they need someone there in case researchers wanted… old documents, or whatever? She’d have to try again later, but she had wanted to get through before Melanie got to work. She didn’t want to risk Melanie picking up. Maybe she should wait for closing, go down there herself, catch Jon on his way out the door…

In the meantime, she should check on her guest. Georgie knew better than to let those things get their hooks in you; the last one had nearly destroyed her with a single sentence. Still, she didn’t think it would try anything on her if it was in the middle of some game with Melanie, so…

But Mary wasn’t in her room. The window was wide open, and a note had been left on the bedside table.

  
  


_Georgie,_

_Thank you for you hospitality, but I can’t stay here. I stayed long enough for Melanie to leave, but Jon might compel her to tell him where I am, and I don’t think it’s fair to get you mixed up in this. I’ll remember your generosity, but I don’t think we’ll see each other again. I think it’s best for me to disappear until the Unknowing. When all this is over and the lies have been stripped from this world, the thing I want to remember most about getting to be Mary was that I got to have friends. I don’t want to do anything that changes that, and that means I can’t be here, where Jon can find me._

_I wish you the best._

_Mary_

  
  


Georgie stared. She almost laughed. Mary wished her the best? Right after talking about how her people were going to end the world in a couple of months? She could at least be pretending to try to stop them; going along with it and being all ‘but good luck with your remaining 2 months!’ was just insulting.

Well, Melanie was not going to be happy about this. Not one little bit. But if it meant Mary leaving Melanie and everyone else alone… fine. She’d take it.


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two bros, chillin' underground, zero feet apart because they're...

When the earth stopped moving, all Martin could feel was the inexorable press of soil.

He couldn’t see anything. He could taste earth and blood, where he must have bitten his lip. He could hear ragged breathing – he could breathe! The earth buried his legs from about the waist, but his head was in the air, his cheek resting on somebody warm and moving; Jon, presumably.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I think I’m in one piece,” Jon grunted in reply. “You?”

“My legs might be trapped, but I don’t think I’m hurt.” As he said it, he kicked his legs experimentally and found that they could move, a little. Slowly, he dragged himself out from behind the pressing earth and hard stones. Jon, from the sounds of it, was freeing himself from a similar situation.

“We might cause a cave-in if we’re not careful,” Jon warned him, “and crush or suffocate ourselves.”

“How much air do we have?”

“No idea.”

The pair, free from the wall, barely fit in the tiny pocket of space. Martin felt Jon’s back pressed up against his stomach as their heads bent awkwardly against the roof and they felt out the space with their arms. Well, elbows.

 _This is it_ , Martin thought. _We’re dead_.

A strange kind of calm on the other side of panic rolled through him. He was so used to fear, now; it had become a background part of his life, always something to watch for, always something to run from, always something to plan around. Worms or artefacts of monsters or his mother having a bad turn or someone trying to hurt Jon. But there was nowhere to run here, there was nothing to plan around, there was nothing to watch for or fight. They had lost, they were dead, the Tower of Babel had collapsed as it was always going to do, eventually, although he hadn’t expected his demise to contain a collapse quite so literal.

There was nothing left to be afraid of.

And Martin knew what he was going to do next, with an unemotional, detached certainty. He was going to pick himself up from the ruins and start building the tower again, because that’s what humans did. They were dead, but he was, nevertheless, going to attempt to survive. It wasn’t even a decision he was making, not really. It was simply the next thing his body would do in these circumstances.

“These tunnels are mostly stone,” he pointed out to Jon. “If we dig around, we might find bigger pockets between the stones. If we’re lucky, we can make it to an intact tunnel and try to find a way out.”

“Or cave this place in and be crushed or trapped.”

“We’re already trapped. And we’re already going to die.”

“Yeah. Let’s look around.”

So the pair started to dig through the dark underground, searching for tunnels and caves.

\-----------------------

  
  


Elias looked at the book in his hands and wondered if he’d done the right thing.

Of course he had. All of logic said he had. This had been the right time – the Buried wasn’t going to get any less dangerous, so it was best to do it early, when it would be easier to recover if Jon died. This had been the right course of action – he hadn’t had to track down some untrustworthy servant of the Buried to manipulate, and could keep everything in his own hands. This had been the right place – the Seven Lamps could manipulate Smirke’s tunnels and Jon had gone into the tunnel of his own accord, so he hadn’t had to lure him anywhere he couldn’t control. But…

Well, it was so hard to _see_ anything in here. He couldn’t tell how Jon was doing. He was pretty sure he was alive, but that meant very little in a cave-in; he could be trapped or bleeding out or suffocating, as good as dead down there in the earth. Elias was fairly sure that the tunnels he’d twisted around were right; big enough that Jon had a reasonable chance of surviving but narrow and confused enough that the Buried would find him down there. But it was out of Elias’ sight now, and therefore out of his control, and if something went wrong…

Well. There was no reversing the action, and it had been the logically correct one, so there was nothing to do but press onward. Complete the day’s tasks. Next task: a very early lunch.

Elias decided to go to the bakery across the street. Himself, without sending a secretary. He… wanted to walk under the open sky for a couple of minutes. He was so distracted worrying about Jon that he almost didn’t See the danger in time, and as he flung himself off the street and landed hard on the pavement he could’ve sworn he felt the van rushing past brush the tip of his shoe.

He barely had to Look to feel Melanie’s rage pulsing from the vehicle. He stood up unsteadily (from the sudden movement, surely; _not_ from fear), checked himself over (badly bruised shoulder, but he wasn’t really hurt), and decided that maybe he should send a secretary after all.

Bringing Melanie aboard was going to pay off with Jon eventually, he was sure, but she was becoming… inconvenient. It was time to nip that in the bud.

It was time for Melanie’s first performance review.

\---------------------

  
  


Through the earth, they dug.

They dug slowly. They dug patiently. They dug in complete darkness, balancing time (they would run out of air if they didn’t find more soon) against safety (one wrong move and the ground would crush them). Displaced earth takes up more space, so as they dug, they ended up with less space around them; soon they were trying to press the loose earth around themselves tight, fighting the ground itself for enough space to inch forward while they tried to breathe as little dust as possible and ignore how quickly the air around them was becoming stale.

It took forever. And then, forever was over. Jon’s hands pushed past a rock and found air.

He didn’t scramble out all at once, collapsing their tiny tunnel on them both. He said, “Martin, I think we’ve found an air pocket,” and carefully widened the gap, crawling forward slowly, very slowly, Martin so close behind him that the man was lying on his legs. They squirmed their way out and dropped into… a space they could almost stand up in. Oh god, the luxury of almost being able to stand up!

Jon couldn’t see anything, of course. His eyes hadn’t adjusted – there was no light to adjust to. Heir torches were… somewhere, in the rubble above them, probably. His legs took his weight, his arms had their full range of movement, and he was breathing. Beyond that, it was hard to tell his condition.

“Are you alright?” he asked Martin.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yes.”

“How far did we dig to get here?”

“Ah, about my body length, I think.”

“Jesus.”

They grabbed each others’ hands in the dark, to avoid losing each other. To have enough space where that was even necessary was… well. Best not to get too optimistic. They could very well still be trapped.

Without needed to discuss it, the pair felt out the bounds of their new prison. The part they’d landed in was about five foot high, although both floor and ceiling were too uneven to be very precise. Tiny, hard stalagmites and stalactites bashed at their feet and heads if they moved incautiously. Jon supposed that that was probably a positive sign; this area hadn’t been disturbed by the cave-in so it was probably a lot more stable. Right?

The tunnel narrowed dramatically on both sides. Soon, they were kneeling on the pointy floor, then lying down. Jon swore quietly.

There was nothing to do but press on through any gap they could fit in. There was no safety in waiting; no rescue was coming.

“We should get out breath and then pick a direction, I suppose,” Jon said.

“I think that end is wider for longer,” Martin said, moving Jon’s hand to indicate which side of the tunnel he meant. “And has less of those little stalagmites. How far underground do you think we are?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t fall for long, so it can’t be far, surely? Although given how long it took us to dig that little tunnel, I don’t think distance really matters.” He sighed. “I don’t… know anything about this place.”

Martin laughed quietly. “Join the club.”

“No, I mean I don’t… sometimes, I know things? Things I… can’t really explain. Like,,, like I’m recalling them from the statements, or some long-lost memory, but they’re often things I wouldn’t have read or heard before. Usually, they’re completely useless, but sometimes I know something useful, and I was hoping I might… know… a way out. But I don’t.” He found himself gripping Martin’s hand tighter. “Quite possibly there is no way out.”

“Probably not,” Martin agreed. “Which means there’s no harm in looking for one. We can’t doom ourselves any further. “What do you mean, about knowing things? Is this like with your unavoidable questions?”

“Probably. I have to assume it’s a Beholding thing. I wish Elias would warn me of these things in advance but…”

“But ‘if you wish to have any chance against the Unknowing, you must learn to see these things for yourself, Jon,’” Martin said in a terrible Elias imitation. “What sort of things do you know? Can you give me an example?”

“Uh, alright. Last week I found out that when you were a child, your stuffed elephant was named Hermann.”

“Oh yeah, Hermann! I’d forgotten about him!”

“I also knew that the footage near that wax museum contained servants of the Stranger. I didn’t recognise either of those people from my captivity, I just knew what they were.”

“That was useful, at least.”

“Yes. I’ve been trying to know something that’ll be useful here, but I don’t have any control over it.”

“It isn’t working on anything down here?”

“Not so far. But I can’t predict when it’s going to happen, or about what, so…”

“Hmm,” Martin said thoughtfully. The space was silent for awhile but for their breathing, before Martin said, “Have you tried feeding it?”

“What?”

“The Ceaseless Watcher. I listened to that recording you made, of your conversation with Jude Perry? Where she talks about feeding your patron so it doesn’t devour you? This knowing… does it happen more when you’ve been doing Archivist things?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. Does it matter?”

“Not sure. But if you want to know how to get out of here, it’s worth a try, right?”

“I don’t exactly have any statements down here to – ”

“You’ve got me.”

 _He couldn’t be serious._ “Martin, you don’t have to do that.”

“You said yourself, we’re probably doomed down here. We’re going to be crawling around blindly until we die or we get out. If we die, it won’t matter, and if it might help us get out…”

“Fine. Tell me what you like, and I’ll… I’ll listen.”

“I don’t think that’s our best bet. I think we have a better chance the more… archivist you are. You should probably ask me, so you can get something that I don’t want to tell you, that I can’t keep from you.”

“I’m not going to force you to tell me about your trauma, Martin!”

“I just said I’m okay with it. If there’s any chance it might help get us out of here.”

“Being coerced by the threat of death isn’t the same as being okay with something. I don’t think you want to do this.”

“Of course I don’t. But no matter how fair any of this is, we are being threatened with death. So… ask.”

Jon squeezed Martin’s hand for reassurance – for him or Martin, he wasn’t sure, and asked. “Martin, what’s an incredibly painful memory that you don’t want to tell me about?”

Martin must have had regrets, because he hesitated before speaking. Then he took a deep, shuddering breath, and began.

“I was eight when my mum started getting properly sick. It wasn’t that long after that my father left…”

  
  



	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody is having a good time.

Melanie strode quickly away from Elias’ office, towards the safety of the archives, trying to get a hold of herself. Elias’ threat echoed over and over in her mind – _“If you try to interfere with me again in any way, I will drive that image so deep into your psyche that even if you are right – even if you live – it will be there every time you close your eyes.”_

At least she’d bruised up his shoulder pretty bad. But she couldn’t even find joy in that.

Oh, god. Dad. Elias was right, it hadn’t been her fault, but… it kind of had, hadn’t it? Even if she hadn’t known. She’d put him there. And he’d suffered so badly. Maybe Elias should put that experience in her mind. Maybe she deserved it. Melanie knew that there’s always been something toxic about her, and she’d fought and fought for everything, fought to be respected, to prove she was worth taking seriously, but deep down, she knew she wasn’t. People who had value didn’t have to try this hard. She’d faked it til she made it, stood in front of cameras with a smile and looked her peers in the eye and pretended she’d known what she was doing, but she always screwed it up, and her bad decisions had killed her father so horribly, along with every other thing in her life.

Now there was just this. And a fucking apocalypse. And she’d probably screw that up, too.

No. No; there was a way out of this. There was always a way to claw back up, she just… she needed to back off for a bit, find another angle, another way to attack this threat that didn’t involve going through Elias, not directly. Or at leas that was quick enough that he wouldn’t be able to retaliate. Poison didn’t work, running him down with a car hadn’t worked, but there’d be…

“Melanie!” Sasha’s overjoyed voice made her jump. “You’re oka – you’re not okay. What the hell happened?! You just disappeared – did the circus – ”

“No,” Melanie managed to say. “I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously _not_.”

“I just saw Elias…”

Understanding dawned on Sasha’s face. “Oh. I’ll, uh… I’ll make you some tea.”

\------------------------

  
  


Martin was heavy, leaning on Jon’s chest. And his tears were making Jon’s neck wet.

But Jon didn’t complain. He just sat there, awkwardly patting Martin’s shoulder as he finished confessing that he knew his mother _hated_ him, always had no matter _how hard_ he tried, and he didn’t know what he’d done _wrong_ …

 _Well, this explains basically everything about why you are the way you are_ , Jon thought, but didn’t say it. Instead he said, “I’m… I’m sorry, Martin.”

“Yeah, well… I asked you to do that, so.” Martin sat up, and moved about a bit, probably wiping his face on his sleeves in the darkness. “So. Do you… know… anything?”

Jon thought. “No. Sorry, I… I can’t control it, and nothing’s…”

“Right.” But Martin didn’t sound disappointed; he sounded… thoughtful.

“You didn’t expect that to work.”

“I thought it was worth a shot, but if you don’t control what you get and a lot of it is useless anyway, the chances of you getting anything useless now were pretty low.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Also,” Martin admitted reluctantly, “there’s a chance that your… knowledge powers?… might not work down here, especially for something like that.”

“I could compel you to answer just fine.”

“Yeah, but we’re both sitting here, next to each other. That’s different to knowing stuff, I think. I’m working on a theory that Elias might not be able to see anything in these tunnels, that maybe they’re… shielded from the Eye, like the van they kept you in.”

“So you just did that as a, what, an experiment? To confirm your theory?”

“No. Your ability not working doesn’t confirm anything; it’s too unreliable. I was hoping you might find something helpful, I’m just… not surprised that you didn’t.”

Jon nodded, although there was no point in the darkness. “It makes sense that those kinds of powers wouldn’t work down here,” he said thoughtfully. “I always feel so lost down here. And if Elias could see things down here, he would’ve noticed Jane’s worms before they attacked the Institute.”

“And Gertrude’s body,” Martin pointed out.

“He hid Gertrude’s body in the tunnels, didn’t he?”

“Exactly. And it was a stupid place to put it. He shot her in her office, left the place covered in blood, but dragged her body into the tunnels before calling the police? That’s a stupid plan. They might have found the trapdoor, and he left it so close tot he entrance; hiding her like that made him look so much more suspicious than if he had’ve just left her in the office. I get why he hid the tapes, I can see why he’d have trouble destroying information, but that really was a terrible hiding location for anything, especially a corpse. I found her by accident, running from worms. It’d only make sense to someone who could see basically everywhere else, to think of a place like that as well-hidden.”

“Ha. There’s a point. You ready to move on?”

“Yeah.”

The pair headed for the end of the cave they wanted to continue from and carefully lay down. If the whole cave was like this, Jon thought, it might not be the lack of air or eventual starvation that got them – they might simply be torn to shreds by the cave floor and die of their wounds. They’d have to be careful.

Once again, the tunnel narrowed quickly. The danger of a cave-in had been replaced by the dangers of the sharp, uneven floor and ceiling, which was more painful but technically less dangerous. Jon took the lead, being smaller, and the two didn’t talk as they pushed their way through the gap in the stone as it grew narrower and narrower. They needed to concentrate entirely on their task.

Forward, forward; there was always more forward. Sometimes it sloped up a little, which was very difficult to move through; sometimes it sloped down, which was easier but felt like moving backward, so far as getting out was concerned.

And then, Jon felt it.

“Martin! Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“Breeze! Air flow!”

“I don’t. There’s air flow? That’s fantastic!”

Jon sped up, immediately cut his hand on a rock, and slowed down again. The passage had his chest pressed to the ground, elbows forward to protect his face from floor and ceiling alike, but _there was air at the end of it_.

No light, yet. But maybe, if he kept going…

Something was wrong. Jon stopped moving. He couldn’t hear any problems; just dripping water, hit own breathing…

He couldn’t hear Martin.

“Martin?” he called.

“I’m here.” The voice was further back than Jon had expected. “Keep going, Jon.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m stuck.”

“Alright, I’m coming back.”

“No. No; there’s nothing you can do. Jon, I’m… I can’t fit. I think I can wriggle back, but I can’t go forward.”

“Right. I’m coming back, and we’ll try the other end of the tunnel. It seems narrower at the start, but maybe it – ”

“Jon. No. we can’t do that. These rocks are… you’re cut up, too, right? We can’t afford to backtrack. You need to save your strength to get out, and there’s a breeze ahead of you. That’s the way out.”

“I am absolutely not leaving you here.”

“I know. You’re going to go and get help. Because if you don’t leave and get help, then we’ll both die down here, Jon. So I need you to keep going. Okay?”

“Splitting up won’t help us! It’s dark, and this place is a maze, and – ”

“Staying here will get us both killed. It’s our only chance. Please, Jon – keep going. Find that breeze.”

“I will come back for you.”

“I know. Good luck, Jon. I… I just want to say… well. Good luck.”

“Stay safe, Martin.”

And then Jon started to crawl forward again, pitting his vulnerable flesh against the limited mercy of cold stone.


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Down, down, down, down...

Martin waited, still, until he couldn’t hear Jon any more. He wanted to shout encouragement, tell him he… but saying anything more risked Jon changing his mind, coming back for him, and Martin was still in that cold place on the other side of terror where their death was the default any anything more was a step forward. He didn’t need Jon’s company to die in the cold dark. And Jon, if he kept moving, had a chance to make it out. A negligible chance, but a chance.

So he didn’t move, he didn’t make a sound, until Jon was gone. And then he slowly edged backward, every inch closer to his tomb costing him a bump or a scrape.

Then he huddled near the tunnel they’d made to arrive, hugged his knees, and waited to collapse into hysterics.

But the hysterics never came.

Pathetic, in a way. He could sob uncontrollably over not connecting with his mother, but not his own death? Well, the former had had the help of a compulsion. Maybe if he’d told Jon about how they were definitely going to die, he’d have cried over that, too. Unfortunate that Jon’s last memories of him were going to include him sobbing into his neck like a baby, but Martin had known the risks. And he _was_ scared. So scared, he couldn’t feel it any more, like when you turned up the audio too loud and everything flattened to a thundering, meaningless noise. Not only was it easy to dismiss, but even here, with space and time to process, he tried to reach for it and couldn’t.

And now he was going to die. He wondered how many of the fears his demise was feeding, although if they were all really aspects of the same thing he supposed the question didn’t have any true meaning. Still, it was nice that at least someone was getting something positive out of this experience.

The stone on the walls and roof of his tomb was smoothed with water where it wasn’t sharp with stalagmites, hard and clearly undisturbed for centuries, except for their entrance tunnel. He’d seen parts of the tunnel system like this higher up, in the areas they usually walked, mixed among the more obviously constructed stuff, tunnels built by humans and nature locked together in a confusing and ever-changing mesh, but this part had obviously never been part of the network. The only mess and dust in the place was what they had brought with them, bursting through the wall, wildly off-course.

He hoped that the path Jon had taken eventually looped back to the tunnels they’d been trying to dig back into. But even if it did, those tunnels were so confusing…

A piece of rubble fell from the entrance tunnel behind him, onto his shoulder, and something moved down his shirt. _Worm! Jane’s worm!_ Finally, he felt real panic again; Martin jumped to his feet, cracking his head on the stone above and dropping back down immediately, ignoring the new head wound while he scrabbled for the invader on his back. He should’ve been careful, he should’ve realised that the CO2 might not reach as far as the worms, he shouldn’t have assumed that just because Jane was dead didn’t necessarily mean all the worms were…

His hand closed around the invader and crushed it. It hadn’t been a worm. It had been a spider. Jane was dead, Jane’s worms were dead. It was just one of the tunnel spiders, having fallen with them and survived by luck until…

The tunnel spiders.

Those tunnels had been full of spiders, their ceilings crossed with cobwebs. Digging around blind was a great way to die, and they’d been lucky to find this little cavern the first time, but with a map… if Martin could be sure of the direction to a tunnel and keep digging until he found it…

All he had to do was follow the trail of spiders through the earth until the tunnel opened up again. And he’d sent Jon off to wander – no, that was probably for the best, actually. Jon would panic and kill himself having to crawl through spiders like this. But Martin had a chance of maybe getting up there and sounding the alarm; they could come back for Jon…

Martin felt a flash of beautiful, relieving hope.

And then, of course, came the bone-deep dread and fear. If imminent death wasn’t a certainty, well… it was still very much on the horizon. He was almost certainly going to die. And he was going to do it squirming his way through loose soil filled with spiders and the scattered remains of Corruption worms.

Martin remained where he was for a bit, freaking out. He absolutely did not want to go in there until his breathing was well under control.

\----------------------------

  
  


Eventually, the crack through which Jon was wriggling, inch by inch, began to widen once again. He could take full breaths. He could move forward without cutting his face. He could manoeuvre his arms, and get his knees under himself, a little.

That maddening little breeze seemed to have changed direction; it was through another narrow bit, but he was not, he was not going that narrow again until he was certain he absolutely had to. Uneven stone pulled at his tattered clothing like tiny, grasping hands; once, he was certain a fist had closed around his ankle, and kicking out in panic had copped him a nasty bruise on his knee. He still couldn’t see anything, of course, but he followed the widening of the gap, moving away from the breeze still, which felt wrong but –

No, the direction of the air had changed. More than one exit? Or perhaps he was simply going mad. That would make sense. He’d been crawling on his belly for… it had to be hours, right? It must be hours. Or maybe minutes, maybe days. Impossible to tell. He’d been crawling for _time_ , struggling for every inch and every breath, paying for progress in blood and pain with no certainty about whether he was even making progress or simply burying himself deeper. This wasn’t the sort of thing a human was supposed to do. So maybe he had gone mad.

Maybe that was why the tiny little stir of that breeze blew back and forth now, like somebody breathing on his face.

“Who’s there?!” Jon screamed into the darkness. His own voice bounced painfully right back into his ears, but that was all. No answer.

Which meant he was alone. Because if somebody was lying right in front of him, invisible in the dark, breathing onto his face, they would have had to answer. If somebody was grabbing at his trousers, trying to pull him back into the tight space he was escaping, they would have had to answer. People answered him. That was how it worked.

So he was alone. He was safe.

Well, except for the obvious, very significant dangers to his life, he was safe.

Jon dragged himself forward, forward, until he could crawl. Until he could crouch, Until he could stand, for the few seconds his trembling legs allowed him before giving out.

He slumped against a wall of soft earth and rough stone, not smoothed or calcified by water, and was hit with the sudden memory that the Institute was technically built on a swamp. So he could very well be under the water level right now, in a little pocket of air mercifully unfilled, but where one wrong turn or a shift of the ground could…

No, best not to think of that. Besides, this air pocket must have remained for centuries, so what was the chance it would fill now? Could even he really be that unlucky?

Hmm. Definitely best not to think of that.

When he could stand properly, Jon continued forward. He’s have liked to rest, but Martin might need help as soon as possible. His shoes were as tattered as everything else on him, but the soles were intact, so being able to walk meant hardly any new injuries; a true luxury. He just had to keep one hand in front of him, one on the wall, and follow… what was he following? That strange, soft thumping, like footsteps? No – the breeze. The breeze was the other way.

He could do this. He _had_ to do this. Martin was counting on him.

\-------------------

  
  


Martin dug.

There were animals who did this all the time. Rabbits, for instance. And moles. Moles were amazing at tunnelling through the earth, and they weren’t very smart, so it couldn’t be too hard.

Of course, when humans tried, they usually died. Martin tried not to think too hard about that as he dug his hands into the soft rock and earth they’d emerged from a lifetime ago and, once again, buried himself.

He didn’t need light. He didn’t need a map. He had hundreds of spiders, living and dead, and their guiding cobwebs to reassure him with every handful that he was going the right way.

Ew. This was going to make a really weird statement later. Best to record it himself and log it right into the database, he thought; Jon definitely wouldn’t want to read this one. The digging was easier than expected, actually. It definitely wasn’t easy; the earth held him and he was constantly gasping used and dusty air, lashing blindly for another little pocket to breathe. But there were pockets, caught between stone and cobwebs, if he could stomach the occasional spider to the face. And earth laced with webbing was easier to burrow through than bare earth had been. He tried not to think about how horribly infected his many, many cuts probably were as he dug and dug and… hit air. Air!

Martin wriggled out into the tunnel. Then he felt around to confirm that, yes, he was in a tunnel. A tunnel in a network that he knew to be treacherous and easily lost in, that would seem to move around without warning, and with no way to know how far underground he was or how far from the Institute, but…

One hand to the wall, Martin started to walk.

\-----------------------------

  
  


“Sasha, have you seen Monsterboss today?”

“Not since first thing this morning. Why?”

“Oh, I’m just looking for a tape I think he was using. But it’s not important. It can wait until he swans back in again. You want anything from the bakery?”


	49. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Help arrives.

“Hey there.”

Mary looked up from her book at the man towering over her. He looked about mid-20s and was looking her up and down with a crooked smile.

“Hello,” she said, turning back to her book. He took the seat across from her. Why? Was it wrong to go to a coffee shop alone? Perhaps she was supposed to bring company, and he was trying to help her out by providing it.

“How’s the book?” he asked.

“It is dramatic,” she replied. “Ye Zhao needs to lead the army to protect her people from being conquered, she’s their last hope, but she’s just found out she’s pregnant and doesn’t think she’ll have a chance to get pregnant again. So she needs to choose whether to keep the baby, which could put all of China in danger if her enemies find out she’s not in peak physical condition, or give up on her chance for children. I hope she keeps it. She really wants children.”

“Uh… right. So, are you waiting for anyone?”

“No.”

“You want company?”

She smiled without looking up. “Yes, but I don’t think they want me.”

“Well, I’m – ”

Mary looked the man in the eyes and gave him one of her less practiced smiles. He sat back suddenly, but didn’t leave. Melanie would be disappointed in her for doing this on purpose again, probably, but she was what she was. She put down the book. “You have a few minutes to talk, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Great. How’s your day going?” She picked up her coffee and sipped, maintaining eye contact the entire time.

“It’s uh, fine. I mean, I have work later, so that’s…” he shifted awkwardly in his seat, edging it back from the table.

“But you’re free to talk right now.” Mary tried the smile again, a little wider this time.

The man swallowed nervously.

“What’s your name?”

“Um… Paul?” An obvious lie.

“No it isn’t.”

He edged back further. Mary reminded herself to go gentle. If she pushed too hard, he was going to flee and the game would be over.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You wanted to talk to me.” She sat back a little, pulled up a more normal smile. Still maintained eye contact, though. “Anything interesting happen to you today?”

‘Paul’ glanced around, but nobody else in the coffee shop was looking at them. Mary could practically see his mind work to make this situation normal again. “Well I saw a car accident. I think everyone was fine, though? A van accident, anyway.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A van with some kind of ghost slogan on it swerved off the road and took out a mailbox and nearly hit a dude.”

Melanie. She’d been sick; probably not in a condition to drive…

“Where? Where did this accident happen?”

\------------------------------

  
  


Martin knew he couldn’t keep wandering forever. Sooner or later, he was going to pass out. And sooner or later, he was going to die. He just had to hope he’d stumble into an exit before then.

One hand to the wall, he kept walking.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Jon didn’t want to crawl into another tiny gap. He really, really didn’t want to.

But there was no choice. It was the _only_ way forward. And at least the ground here was smoother, softer. It wouldn’t cut him up so badly. He gritted his teeth, got down, and started to crawl forward.

\------------------------------

  
  


The accident had been practically outside the Magnus Institute. Mary stood across the road, staring at the little ring of hazard tape around the space a mailbox had once stood. Then she headed into the parking lot to check Melanie’s van, which looked barely damaged. Melanie had parked the van at work, and presumably gone to work. She was fine.

Mary should leave.

But…

What was she doing? Just waiting for the apocalypse, hiding out because she didn’t want to face the problems her own loyalties had created? She wasn’t helping her friends or the Circus out here. She was just hiding. Could she claim to have friends, in the end, if all she was doing was avoiding them so they had no chance to be anything else?

Ye Zhao would be ashamed of her. Frodo and Antigone and Sam Vimes and Superman would all be ashamed of her.

If she was going to have friends, she had to back that commitment up. She had to give them a chance to be friends, or to… not be friends. And if they didn’t like her any more, that was their choice. And if they wanted to kill her, well, she was sure she could get away without having to hurt any of them. Not permanently, at least. Even if she might… even if she might have to give up being Mary, because there was no point to Mary that wasn’t tied up in her friends. But that was the risk she was going to have to take, if she wanted Mary to be a good and honourable person.

Mary held her head up high, and headed in to work.

\---------------------------

  
  


Zara headed down into the cellar for another keg. The beer was flowing pretty freely, for the middle of the day, and she was run off her feet four hours into her shift at the pub, so when she heard a strange thumping on the cellar wall she was inclined to ignore it. That was, until the banging became more insistent. And then the wall began to tremble.

Zara stepped back and scanned the room for some kind of weapon just as the wall collapsed inward and a figure stumbled out, collapsing immediately onto their knees.

The man was dressed in rags so torn up and covered in dark mud that she couldn’t tell what clothes they’d originally been. Most of his skin and hair was covered in the same mud, a mix of dirt and blood, and the skin that was visible was covered in cuts, bruises and scrapes. He had one hand pressed over his eyes to shut out the light while he gasped and trembled for a bit, before saying in a remarkably even and polite tone, “Hi. I’m Martin. Where am I? Also, can I borrow your phone? It’s kind of important.”

\------------------------

  
  


Tim had sort of grown to expect that something could ruin his day at any time. So while he spent the afternoon absently scrolling through Facebook and steadfastly refusing to get any real work done, he wasn’t surprised when somebody opened the door to the archives to presumably do exactly that.

He was surprised that it was Mary, though.

The pair sized each other up for a moment, Tim resting his hand on the axe under his desk, which he’d taken from Martin’s. Mary gave him a bright smile. “Hi, Tim.”

“Hi, Mary. Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“We went looking for some ghosts. It was fun.” Her eyes caught the safe in the corner. “Oh, that’s new!”

“Yeah, got it installed to protect our more important stuff. It’s really secure, check it out.” He got up and opened the safe, gesturing theatrically to the inside. Mary, looking delighted, came right over to have a look.

“It’s huge!”

“Yeah, I thought I’d go upmarket, since Elias has to pay for it. Fucker. I reckon you could fit a whole person in here.” To demonstrate, he got into the safe himself, but he couldn’t quite get his head or arms in. “Dammit.”

“I could fit!” Mary said excitedly. “See?” She jumped right in.

It was _too fucking easy_. She had one leg out of the safe, one hand on the door; the instant she pulled those in…

Tim’s phone rang. One hand on the safe door, he answered. “Martin? Martin, calm down; what’s – are you at hospital yet? Fine, fine; I’ll handle it. Call the police and go to hospital, we’ll do what we can here. Okay.” He hung up.

Two monsters trapped, huh. Monsterboss underground, Mary about to climb into the safe. She pulled her arm and leg in, leaned back against the back of the safe, and grinned triumphantly. “See?”

And just like that, the impossibly strong shapeshifter could be contained.

Tim sighed. He took his hand off the door. “That’s pretty impressive,” he said, “but you should get out of there. Jon’s in trouble, and I think you might be able to help.”


	50. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Mary, since you all like her so much.

Mary wasn’t entirely sure how she was supposed to find Jon. The tunnels under the Institute were so easy to get lost in at the best of times, and they went everywhere, and she had no idea where Jon would be by now.

But she volunteered to go down, and made a persuasive argument, and convinced everyone that she was the best choice. If she got lost down there then she, unlike the others, wouldn’t die. If she got trapped or in trouble then she, unlike the others, had the ability to change her shape and get out of it. She was immune to a lot of the dangers that plagued her friends; she was of the Stranger and no other fear could mark or claim her, and her facsimile of fear, real as it was to her personally, didn’t feed them. She couldn’t read statements, couldn’t fall victim to Leitners without human intervention (she’d broken into storage and experimented with a few awhile back; nothing), couldn’t feed the fears and wrap them around her mind and trap and kill herself. She didn’t even need light all the time; she’d brought one, but she could mostly keep it turned off and use the touch and hearing she’d enhanced for this purpose to navigate, which would save her batteries.

So if someone was going to venture down into those tunnels…

She wasn’t sure how she was going to find Jon, but she had… an inkling. Mary tended to run into humans wherever she went. That made sense; it was what she was _for_. If she wandered into those tunnels, and there was only one human in close proximity… well, it wasn’t the most reliable plan, but it was all they had. And if she didn’t find him, the rescue teams would show up soon enough. Once they finished arguing about who had to go to the Magnus Institute, and had scrounged together enough Sectioned police.

So through the dark, Mary walked.

\-------------------------------

  
  


_So t_ _his is it_ , Jon thought. _This is how I die_.

It hadn’t even seemed like a very tight squeeze at first. It hadn’t been, really. But he’d been scrambling forward on his elbows, and something above had shifted, and finally, finally, the ground had caved in on him, pinning his legs. There was open air just ahead, he knew; if he stretched out his arms, he could wave them in all directions. He was _so close_. But he’d been pulling and struggling and kicking against the weight on his legs, and there was simply nothing to be done. He was stuck, in the dark earth, where nobody would find him. He was going to die.

And somewhere behind him, Martin was waiting in the dark for Jon to bring a rescue party. How long would it be before Martin gave up hope in him? Or would Martin die in the dark still holding onto the conviction that Jon would save him?

Somewhere, out in the darkness, the random echoes of water once again resolved into a sound that might be analogous to footsteps, but not human ones. The gait was off, the sounds were…

But there was nothing down here, he knew that; he was alone. Nothing was going to get him but time; thirst, hunger, exhaustion, infection. The cold, maybe. No monsters were coming closer, even if that’s what it sounded like… was that laughter? Was somebody quietly laughing?

“Who’s there?” Jon shouted into the cave, expecting once again a reassuring lack of an answer.

“Mary!” came the reply. “Jon? Where are you?”

“What do you want?”

“To fiiiiiiiind you!” Her answer bounced off the cave walls in such an eerie, inhuman way that Jon, who’d thought his fear was all used up on the myriad threats to his life around him, felt a sudden new stab of terror for the thing in the cave with him, and as he did so, she immediately stopped walking. “Oh! There you are!”

And then she was there, next to him; fingers that were too broad and hard to be human with sturdy nails designed for digging were running over him, searching for the stones that trapped him. Bone and sinew snapped and cracked around him as she reached further into the crevice than a human arm should be able to, clearing away the rubble on his legs with impossible strength and gently pulling him out.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Um… no.”

“Can you walk?”

“I don’t…” Jon tried to stand. Failed. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll carry you, then.”

He was lifted onto a back that felt _wrong_. Mary’s waist was too narrow, her hips too wide; not in an hourglass figure sort of way, but more like channels had been dug into the sides of her waist to allow his legs to sit comfortably while he piggybacked her. She leaned forward as she walked, so it was easy for him to lie on her and not fall off and the pair could keep their heads well clear of the ceiling, and moved forward at an angle and pace that shouldn’t be nearly as comfortable or easy for a human skeleton as it seemed to be for her.

She handed him a water bottle, which he drank from, gratefully.

“Thank you. Martin’s trapped, he –”

“He’s already out.”

“He’s okay?”

“He’s in hospital. I don’t think he hurt himself permanently.” Mary stopped walking. “Jon, you need to calm down.”

“What?”

“You’re too scared. These tunnels are really hard to navigate already and you’re getting us turned around. You’ve wrapped your fear of being buried all around your mind and you’re leading us in circles.”

“I can’t just stop being afraid of something.”

“Can you be someone who isn’t afraid, for a little while? You can always be Jon again when you’re out. I won’t steal him.”

“That’s not… how does that even… I can’t just be someone who isn’t afraid, no. That’s not how humans work.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“I don’t know. Is that impor – ”

“Never mind, I think I have it.” She pulled him off her back and… kissed him.

Jon was too confused to react as Mary pressed her mouth to his. It wasn’t until she breathed into his mouth, and he tasted a strange salty tang at the back of his tongue, that he understood what she was doing… but by then, the drug on her breath and his exhaustion were both dragging him into unconsciousness.

\-------------------------

  
  


Mary felt… wrong… as she handed her unconscious friend over to the ambulance crew. She’d put on her normal form again to exit the tunnels, of course, so nobody gave her a second look except to try to pressure her into letting them check her over (she refused; it was a waste of their time and there were some parts inside her that she still wasn’t sure she’d ever hooked up right and didn’t want doctors looking at), so she was able to just walk away and… think.

Everything was wrong and right at the same time. She was supposed to try to be human, so why was it that the more human she tried to be, the more confusing things had gotten? She’d put on inhuman hands and feet and bones to more easily navigate the tunnels, to better find her friend, and it have felt awful, disgusting, to do so, to use her powers like that, but… everything she’d read, in her dramas, had told her it was the Right Thing, the human thing to do, to use her abilities to help her friend. So why were her Stranger instincts screaming at her that it was wrong? And then she’d found Jon, and he’d been frightened of her; he’d hated the feel of her inhuman hands on him, and that had made them feel right, like she was fulfilling her purpose, but… she didn’t want to make Jon scared, either. And that had confused the hell out of her. She was supposed to make people scared, but humans didn’t want their friends to be afraid… she understood the conflict there a little better, at least. The purpose of her imitation was to stimulate or exacerbate fear. She wasn’t made to be a perfect imitation, so… maybe that was it? She was trying to be more human than she’d been made for?

No, that couldn’t be right. She was nowhere near a good imitation of a human. She was far too confused for that to be the case. Melanie had said that humans were confused about what they were all the time, but Mary was pretty sure she’d just been trying to make her feel better. No way were humans actually this lost all the time; they’d never get anything done.

Or maybe they were confused all the time, and that’s why she was confused. Mary wasn’t certain what she was, exactly – that was sort of the point – but she was pretty sure her explanation to Melanie about being a figment of human imagination was about it. Just as Jon had wrapped his fear of a deep and crushing tomb around himself and fuelled the notion with his fear to trap them in circular tunnels, humanity had distorted its fear of the familiar other to make her, so if humans thought that being confused all the time were core to the human experience then, well. Maybe confusion was something she couldn’t escape.

The problem, she decided, was that she was trying to think like a human and a nonhuman at the same time. Which was all she could do. Because a nonhuman trying to be a human was _what she was_. A walking identity crisis, and she couldn’t do anything about it.

She recalled a conversation she’d had with Sasha a long time ago. Sasha had explained that humans tried to avoid pain, but when Mary had asked about Tim hurting his muscles on purpose with his work out routine, things had gotten… complicated. Sasha had tried to explain that while pain was supposed to report body damage, avoiding it altogether didn’t always have the best outcomes – that sometimes, people endured pain for a more important goal. That Tim put his muscles through pain because the workouts made them stronger, and that was important to him, so he fought against his instincts telling him that moving them was bad, because he knew they were wrong in that instance.

Maybe this was like that. Maybe going through this would make Mary stronger. But how would she know when her instincts were right, and when they were wrong?

No wonder her cousins were all so dismissive of their masks and refused to hold onto them for this long. They were probably worried about eventually having to think about things like this. If the… what analogy had Martin used?… the Tower of Babel was always going to fall eventually, building it bigger just made the fall more devastating, the loss more painful, the collateral damage more widespread. Build a little tower, get bored, knock it down yourself, build somewhere else, don’t think about it. Don’t do something so bloody stupid as to keep building, building higher to heaven, piling on more weight for the inevitable destruction.

She should change the mask and walk away now.

She wasn’t going to. She was going to keep building.

She was too fucking human not to.


	51. Chapter 51

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone uses phones a lot, for some reason?

Georgie called Melanie on her lunch break.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Oh, hey, Georgie. What’s up?”

“Not much. I just… wanted to see if everything’s okay?”

“Oh, yeah, fine. Look, I’m sorry about not updating you on the whole Mary situation right away – I think she’s moving back into her place, did she tell you?”

“… She’s with you?”

“Yeah, she came back to work. Saved Jon’s life. Things are still a bit dangerous here, I’m pretty sure Tim still wants to kill her, but if she’s coming back to work I can’t exactly send her away.”

“She’s back at – what do you mean, saved Jon’s life?”

“Oh, there was a cave-in. Did I tell you about the network of secret tunnels under the Institute?”

“You… did not.”

“Well, there’s a network of secret tunnels under the Institute. Jon and Martin, one of the other assistants, got caught in a cave-in… it’s been a whole thing. Everyone’s alive, apocalypse is still coming up, no one’s sure what to do about Mary since she’s hardly gonna let us stop the apocalypse, it’s all just pure chaos. Also I tried to murder my boss and it didn’t go down well.”

“You tried to kill Jon?”

“No! No, the earth did that part for me. I tried to kill Elias.”

“The… one who, if he died, you die?”

“He says so. I still don’t believe it.”

“Right. Um. Look, this isn’t really a phone conversation. What are you doing tonight? If you come over to mine, we can get Greek takeout and you can explain all this to me again, because I think I still only understand about half of what’s going on.”

“Make it Mexican takeout and you’ve got a deal.”

“Why does no one appreciate Greek food like I do?”

“Because Greek food tastes like sweat. We’re getting Mexican.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll eat boring Mexican food while you tell me about your chaotic day.”

“That’s all I ask.”

After she hung up, Georgie stared at the phone in her hand. So Mary had lied to her. She must have known that Georgie was going to turn her in, so she’d promised to disappear and then… what, returned to the archives behind Georgie’s back? That didn’t make any sense. Georgie wasn’t involved, there was no reason to dodge around her in order to go meet up with the people who Georgie was planning to tell about her anyway.

Whatever was going on, it put Melanie and her coworkers in danger. And Melanie, despite knowing that Mary was a monster, seemed to be buying her bull. Georgie didn’t think that voicing her concerns to Melanie was going to help; it wouldn’t do anything except risk driving Melanie away from her. She needed to find out what kind of danger Melanie was in without pushing Melanie away.

This was complicated.

A few seconds’ googling found what she needed.

Georgie couldn’t help but feel a bit silly as she knocked on the door. What was she supposed to say? ‘I want to pay you to track down a monster and see what it’s up to, here’s where it works’?

“Come in.”

Georgie did. The woman inside, sat behind a large wooden desk in front of the most neatly organised bookcase that Georgie had ever seen. She stood to shake Georgie’s hand.

“Hi, I’m Basira. How can I help you?”

“Georgie. I need help… following someone.”

“That’s what we do here. Who?”

“Not like… I mean, I don’t know her that well. She’s a friend’s coworker…” Georgie trailed off as Basira’s brow raised fractionally. She wasn’t making this sound _great_ , was she?

“Okay, look,” she said. “I think my friend’s coworker might be… dangerous. Like… like a stalker? I don’t have any evidence to take to the police or anything, I just… want to make sure my friend is safe.” _By hiring you to stalk the ‘stalker’ instead_. “My friend started a new job recently, right, at the Magnus Institute, and – ”

That caught Basira’s attention. “Wait, the Magnus Institute? The spooky paranormal research place?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Your friend’s a scientist or something?”

“Uh, no. She was hired as an archival assistant, which she is not qualified for by the way, and one of the other assistants… are you okay?”

“Oh. Yeah. Want a coffee? I think you should tell me everything.”

\-------------------

  
  


“Go back to bed, Jon.”

“Getting kidnapped by the Circus is one thing, but I never thought I’d be kidnapped by my own assistant. This is a betrayal, Sasha.”

“We’re still in your apartment, so you’re not kidnapped. But you are under house arrest. You were in a cave-in and you nearly died. You look like hamburger meat under those bandages. Go to bed.”

“Bright side, at least no one will want to wear this skin for the Unknowing.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I beg to differ.”

“… Okay, yes, it’s hilarious. But it doesn’t buy you going-to-work privileges. I made Martin a solemn promise.”

“Martin’s hurt as badly as I am. Nobody’s guarding his front door.”

“That’s because he’s not an idiot who needs to be told to rest. Also, I’m regularly checking in with him to make sure he’s home.” Sasha waved her phone.

“Pfft. He could lie to you. It’s not like you can ask for photographic proof; that dinosaur of a phone can’t even receive photos.”

“Why does everyone hate my flip phone so much? Do you have any idea how awful the security on a smartphone is?”

“Was that awful security what enabled you guys to find and rescue me from evil clowns? Because that just makes me want a phone with even worse security.”

“Go. To. Bed. I’ll make you some tea.”

“You don’t make it as well as Martin.”

“Shut up or I’ll put salt in it.”

\-----------------------

  
  


As soon as Mary saw that the number calling her was displayed on her phone as ##*??^%&, she knew what sort of caller to expect. She picked up.

“Who is it?”

“Max Mustermann. Who is this?”

“Mary Sue.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mary. They say you’re working closely with the Archivist.”

“Yeah. He’s very well guarded, though,” Mary lied, “so if you want me to get the skin, I don’t think my chances are good.”

“That’s a pity. Not a problem; I’m actually calling because I think I’ve found an alternative, but if you were gonna get the Archivist to the Dance then there’s no need for me to bother.”

“I’ll try to do that,” she lied, “but I really don’t think it’s going to work. You should probably assume I’ll fail.”

“I’ll make a bid for mine, then. See you at the beginning of the world.”

“Looking forward to it.” She hung up.

Well, that was one little problem solved. Jon wasn’t in danger, at least not that specific danger, and they could still go ahead with the Unknowing. Things were going well.

\---------------------

  
  


“Okay, Tim, but what if – ”

“Christ, Martin, you’re always complaining that Jon works when he’s injured. Rest!”

“I am resting. I’m in bed right now. I’m just calling you, too.”

“I’m not going to kill everyone’s pet monster before you get back. Unless she tries to kill me.”

“And the van?”

“Yes, I moved the van. Get some sleep. Everything’s fine here.” Tim hung up.

Martin stared at his phone, sighed, and put it down. This took some effort, as most of his body was covered in bandages and dressings. The hospital had let him go home but insisted on bedrest, which was reasonable, and put him on a whole bunch of tablets, and some of the painkillers made his thinking woolly, which was making him feel antsy. Martin’s response to tress or trouble had always been work; do something to make the situation better, to make people feel better, care for the person who needed care, don’t be useless. Now _he_ was the one lying around, healing, waiting for the world to end.

No wonder Jon kept trying to sneak back too early.

He knew that rest was the right course of action, of course. And he was taking it, he was just... grumpy about it. It wasn’t just his skin and the bruises and the blood loss and the dehydration; his immune system had taken a hit too, maybe due to some kind of infection he’d picked up down there. He knew this because the fungus in his hand was back.

Two days after getting out of the tunnels, his little finger had stopped working again. At first, he’d hoped it was another injury from his dig (strange thing to hope for), but no – more of that stringy white stuff was growing its way under the nail. He’d applied the antifungal cream that had worked so well last time, but it didn’t seem to be doing much. So once he was all healed up from his various tunnelling injuries, he’d have to go _back_ to the doctor to deal with _that_ , he supposed.

At least Sasha was keeping Jon at home. That was one less thing to worry about.


	52. Chapter 52

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon can have little a power abuse. As a treat.

A monster working at the Magnus Institute. Basira wasn’t surprised.

A monster who was an assistant to Jonathan Sims. Even less surprising.

Some kind of recent accident at the Magnus Institute that put Jon and one of his assistants in hospital was a bit unexpected, but that had nothing to do with Basira’s case; if anything, it made it easier to track this Mary, who was… weird. Weird like… kind of like a character from The Sims.

Ha, and she worked for Sims. There was a joke in there somewhere.

More importantly, having a reason to investigate Mary gave her a bit of an in for the whole truck-of-C4 thing. She and Daisy didn’t know where the C4 was for the moment, but if his assistants were involved and she was discovered following Mary or poking around the Institute – she wouldn’t be, but if she was – then she had a handy excuse for why that had nothing to do with ‘I’m investigating a potential terror plot instead of taking it to the police’.

She’d searched Mary’s house, and found it weird but not dangerous. No hidden explosives or folders full of secret plans or anything. Just… kind of sparse, without any computers and with a TV that was clearly barely used, but containing a frankly ridiculous amount of tea and books. Maybe she was just one of those tech-suspicious, pro-paper-book people who seemed to be all over Pinterest. She even had five houseplants lined up on a windowsill with little plaquards carefully hand-lettered with their names. Not their species; people names.

It was an intimidating place to search, because it was so picturesque that Basira felt like if she touched anything, Mary would know.

All in all, her case monitoring Mary Sue wasn’t proving as useful as she’d hoped. Yes, Mary was weird. No, she hadn’t seen any reason to believe she was stalking, or doing anything dangerous to, Melanie King, although it was a little early in her surveillance to be sure. And she definitely hadn’t found any connection to the _missing stolen van full of C4_ that was rather higher on her priority list than a client’s paranoia about their friend making other friends, even if those other friends did work for a building that was basically a freestanding Section 31 and were probably monsters and/or terrorists.

Maybe Daisy was having better luck.

\--------------------------------

  
  


Sims spent several days at home after the incident at the Institute, but soon he was on his feet again, and Daisy was ready to tail him. It helped that he immediately did something suspicious, taking a bus to the outskirts of town late at night and sitting at a bus stop next to another man in the dark. With nobody else around, it was a little tricky for Daisy to sneak close enough to hear their conversation unnoticed, but this wasn’t her first monster hunt.

“Cold tonight, isn’t it?” Sims began.

“Ha, yeah. Hopefully the bus isn’t late.”

“I’m Jon.”

“Craig.”

“Are you Craig Bensen, who works for Miller Construction?”

“Yeah. How did you – ?”

“Do you know how to properly use C4 to take down buildings.”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m Jon.” He took out a notebook. “And I’m very sorry about this. Normally I wouldn’t do something like this; I know it isn’t fair to you, but you have to understand that the stakes are very high and we’re simply out of time. So. What’s the most illegal thing you’ve ever done?”

“Um. The Hensen Street building. We switched out the support beams for a cheaper material, it should’ve been safe, but the owners later added more weight than it could take, assuming our work was up to code… it collapsed and killed three people.” Craig’s eyes widened. He leapt to his feet, but Sims fixed him with the most intense stare that Daisy had seen outside her dreams, and the man’s knee’s collapsed, forcing him back down.

“Please don’t go anywhere,” Sims continued, unblinking. Craig didn’t. He didn’t look to Daisy like he was being held down by invisible ropes, or struggling against anything, he was just… too terrified to move.

Without breaking eye contact, Sims asked for details about the building collapse, scribbling away in his little notebook. Then he asked for the second most illegal thing Craig had ever done. After going down the list far enough hat they were in the realm of parking tickets, Sims switched instead to asking Craig what he was most ashamed of. What were his darkest secrets. He stared, he listened, he wrote.

And Craig answered every question, clearly and concisely, while trembling head to toe.

After awhile, Sims said, “Sorry about all that. We’re very nearly done. Only two questions to go. First: if you had to choose between helping me illegally blow up a building, knowing it was for the greater good and would save more people than it hurt, or having everything you’ve told me revealed to the world, what would you choose?”

“I’d blow up the building,” Craig said without hesitation. “Wait, I can’t – ”

“But you will. Second question: what’s your phone number?”

Craig told him. He wrote it down, flipped the notebook closed, stood up.

“Thank you, Craig. You’ve been very helpful. I’ll probably be contacting you within the next couple of weeks, so keep your schedule open. And there’s nothing to worry about – help me out with this one little thing, and these secrets are safe with me. Have a good night.”

He walked away.

Daisy watched him go from her hiding place. She remained where she was until Craig’s bus arrived and he boarded, leaving her alone on the street. She thought about how Sims had asked her how she knew about the coffin, and how she’d just… told him. It had felt so normal at the time. She thought about those eyes, watching her ever since.

So this was what he could do. One of the things he could do. And he was going to need a demolitions guy ‘sometime within the next too weeks’.

Daisy had a lot of secrets of her own, and not nearly enough secrets of Jonathan Sims’. This was going to be dangerous.

\------------------------------

  
  


Martin pulled the trapdoor shut above him and tried, unsuccessfully, to reassure himself that the tunnel was safe. Not straying from the stairs, he pulled out his torch (couldn’t handle the torch and the trapdoor at the same time, with his left hand almost completely paralysed) and swept the area of the cave-in.

Yep. There it was. A gaping hole where they’d been dropped through the ground. The cave-in had taken his concept map, too; a few notecards were scattered here and there over the ground, rendered meaningless by being torn from the network. Not a big deal; he should only really be focusing on the Unknowing at the moment, and the necessary tasks for that weren’t really complicated enough to need the map. Find out the exact time for the Unknowing, plant the bombs, blow it up. None of those things were simple, but still.

More interesting was the hole. The hole that had opened up just as he and Jon were in the tunnel. Directly under them, and not much further.

Possibilities:

1) Coincidence. Laughable.

2) Someone trying to kill Jon; off the Archivist before he got too powerful. That made sense. Jane Prentiss had attacked the Institute, the Circus had abducted him; it was reasonable that there’d be others out there who thought he was a threat. Martin and Jon had recorded statements of their experiences, and Martin had of course listened to Jon’s; he’d talked about feeling like something else was down there, hearing footsteps and the like. That might be the sorts of hallucinations you’d expect from someone in his position, or it might be some Buried monster making a play for him. Was that it? Did these tunnels belong to the Buried? Maybe that’s why Elias couldn’t See down there? (Important not to take that as unquestioned fact; he still wasn’t _sure_ what Elias could or couldn’t See.) Worth investigating. But probably not from within the tunnels.

Martin retreated back up the stairs. He needed to talk through this with someone, sort it out with someone. Not Jon – the last thing that man needed was more inspiration to throw himself directly into danger. Not Tim – while he’d accepted Jon’s… eldritch condition… and even seemed to be tolerating Mary beyond continually reminding hem that she’d kill them without hesitation if it meant helping to end the world, Martin wasn’t about to push their luck by putting more close-to-home spooky weirdness on his shoulders. He’d probably assume Mary was involved, since she’d found Jon down there, in some kind of elaborate setup to kill them all. Could he talk it over with Mary? Maybe. It was always unpredictable, what Mary did or didn’t know, but she might know something useful. Especially since she’d digitised most of the statements in their electronic database, so probably had a lot of facts to hand that would otherwise require tedious searching. But her way of understanding the world was so off-the-wall that it was a chore just to get on the same page long enough to learn anything useful from her, and she was terrible at keeping secrets, so sharing anything with her was as good as sharing it with anyone in the office who cared to know. Well, that wasn’t true; Mary was great at keeping secrets. The problem was that she had to be specifically told that something was a secret, and then if anyone asked about it she’d announce to their face that it was a secret and expect them to accept that and back off. Martin had attempted to explain subtlety to her but just gotten baffled looks.

Melanie was out, too; she’d tried to kill Elias twice and wasn’t being as subtle as she thought she was about plotting a third attempt. Since her last assassination attempt had involved trying to run him down on a public street in her van, telling her about a new threat under their feet could go badly. Of course, she’d adapted to Mary well enough, but she’d found out about Mary while simultaneously finding out that Mary wasn’t all that much of a threat. And then she had run off with Mary, so… also not great.

Sasha, then. Bright, rational, not about to fly off the handle or throw herself into danger at the suspicion of there maybe being a monster underground who wants to kill her boss.

He pulled out his phone.


	53. Chapter 53

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes Martin!

Elias wasn’t surprised to check his locked office drawer and find the Seven Lamps of Architecture gone.

He did a quick check of his various anti-theft mechanisms to ensure nobody had been going through his things, but he already knew it hadn’t been stolen. The book could get nothing more out of him, and had moved on. He could’ve held onto it if he’d stocked it in The Library, but he’d already decided against that; he had no further use for it, and he didn’t want to concentrate too many books he didn’t need in there. It was critical that The Library remained powerful enough to use, but not so powerful that it would destroy the various systems he’d been using to bend its power to the service of the Eye for two hundred years. A book that could shift earth around was hardly worth the space.

Well, they should be getting some exciting new statements from the Buried soon, once some poor fool tried to read it. That should be fun.

He glanced out the window, at the hunter in the coffee shop across the road. He was a little surprised she hadn’t made her move on Jon yet, but he supposed that was a good thing; give Jon a little more time to recover from his underground adventure and increase his chances of surviving her. And Melanie, of course, should leave him alone now that she understood what was at stake if she stood against him, so it was only a matter of time before her anger was redirected at her immediate boss instead. That just left… what would that leave? The Flesh, the Dark, the Lonely, and the End. The end was always going to be a tricky one, but the others… yes, things were ticking along nicely.

It was probably time to make his pitch to Peter.

\----------------------

  
  


Sasha kept pace with Martin as they walked to the cafe together and considered what he’d told her. “So you’re saying there’s some kind of Buried monster living under the Institute?”

“I’m not sure; I haven’t _seen_ it. But that seems the most likely thing, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, we got chased into the tunnels by that table thing; who knows what else might have ended up in them through stuff like that?”

Martin paled. “I’d forgotten about that thing! It could have gotten us down – oh god, what if it did? What if Jon isn’t Jon?”

“I’m sure he is. He can still compel people, right?”

“So? Maybe the monster can do that once it’s taken him over, or whatever.”

“I don’t think so. Mary can’t do anything Eye-related; she can’t even ‘read’ the statements.”

“Yeah. Yeah; good point. Although he says he got secrets from the demolition guy; nobody actually saw us compel him. Maybe he’s the monster working against us. I’ll make sure to watch him compel someone next time.” He watched Sasha out of the corner of his eye. “Also, you should be suspicious that I might be a monster that ate Martin.”

Sasha had to concede that Martin’s paranoia, while annoying, was justified. But come on. “Well, you brought up the possibility,” She said playfully. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to throw suspicion on yourself, Monster Martin.”

“Unless that’s exactly what I want you to think, because I knew it’d occur to you eventually, so I decided to bring it up first and look less suspicious.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Fine. Two birds, one stone – when we get back to the office, we’ll ask Jon to compel you to tell us who you are. Alright?”

“That works.” Martin grinned mischeivously. “Unless we’re _both_ Stranger monsters. Maybe a second one was hiding in the table…”

“You’re worse than Tim sometimes.”

“Not sure if I should be flattered or insulted.”

“Insulted. Definitely. So do we have a plan for dealing with our possibly-nonexistent-Buried-monster that might want to kill Jon?”

“I’m thinking we just… stay out of the tunnels.”

“Simple and direct. I like it.”

“Well, it’s not like we don’t have enough to worry about already.”

They ordered their food and sat at a table out front. Sasha thought she saw someone familiar at another table, but when she looked back, the woman was gone. Someone had, however, left something on their table – a small book. Sasha reached out to grab it.

Martin’s hand closed over her wrist. “Careful!”

She frowned, puzzled. “What?”

“You can’t just go touching it!” He used his own (gloved) hand to pick the book up himself and open the front cover. He didn’t look surprised to see the bookplate: From the Library of Jurgen Leitner.

Sasha and Martin’s eyes met.

“We should get that to artefact storage,” Sasha said.

“No kidding.”

“Do we need to… do we have something safe to put it in?”

Martin looked more closely at the book. “I think it’s safe, actually. So long as we don’t read it.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Well, maybe I’m wrong, but either way the safes thing to do is get it to artefact storage as soon as possible, right?” He stood up, while Sasha collected their food – no sense letting it go to waste.

“The Seven Lamps of Architecture,” Sasha murmured. “What do you think it’s about?”

“Don’t read it!”

“I just saw the title. I can’t exactly avoid the title!”

“Maybe the professionals will know. Let’s just… let’s just get this thing out of our hands as quickly as possible.”

So they headed back to the Institute. So much for a long, relaxing lunch break.

\--------------------------

  
  


Martin let himself sound a bit more nervous and excited than he felt as he handed the Leitner over. He told the grinning lady who handed him the induction form that it was the first Leitner he’d ever actually seen (which was true), and was overly detailed in explaining the rather boring story of the ‘discovery’, so it wasn’t remotely surprising when he asked her to keep him informed of anything they found out about it, which she indulgently agreed to do. _Of course_ the archives guy, who spent his days playing with paper instead of handling real supernatural artefacts, would want updates on ‘his’ Leitner. Give him something to brag to the other people in his department about. It was probably the most exciting thing to happen to him in his career so far.

Martin, for his part, immediately went back to the archives and started looking up the Seven Lamps of Architecture in their database. And on the internet. He also looked for statements involving unnamed Leitners that fit the book’s description, just in case. Because there was something about the book that he hadn’t told Sasha.

There’d been a tiny hole in his glove. And when his skin had touched the book in his hand. He’d learned something about how it was connected to the world – specifically he’d seen, just for a moment, who the last person to read the Leitner had been.

It was Elias.

The fact that he was apparently getting random bits of knowledge now was unexpected, but made sense, he supposed. None of the other assistants had mentioned any such thing, but if it was happening to Jon… well, he’d wait to see if it kept happening before comparing notes. The more interesting, and probably more immediately important question was: why was Elias reading Leitners and abandoning them at cafes?

A couple of hours’ research gave him very little. The Seven Lamps was one of those Leitners that shared a title and theme with a normal everyday book, apparently, which made things more difficult. It was affiliated with the Buried, tending to, well, bury its readers, and there were mentions of some kind of synergy with Smirke’s architecture.

Martin was used to the feeling of being watched at all times within the Institute, so he didn’t visibly react as he mentally reevaluated basically every conclusion he’d drawn over the past week or so. Most importantly, the cave-in.

Elias had gone into the tunnels when Martin had gone down there to set up his concept map. Martin had assumed that Elias was there specifically to see what he was doing, but what if he’d been there preparing something else with the tunnels? Preparing to collapse them on Jon? Maybe he could see in the tunnels perfectly fine… and the reason he hadn’t seen Prentiss’ worms was, well, that he had, Prentiss had been pretty direct about her pursuit for the Arhivist. And he’d watched Jon be kidnapped by clowns and not told the assistants about it, though he _claimed_ he couldn’t See where they’d taken him…

And Elias had fed them the tapes that had put them on the trail of the Unknowing which, to be fair, did need to be stopped, but he was so insistent that Jon specifically would be needed…

Was Elias trying to kill Jon?

That… didn’t make much sense. He’d shot Gertrude, not played these weird cat-and-mouse games with her. And Elias had appointed Jon; why appoint an Archivist just to kill him? He’d left Gertrude alone for a good fifty years. Had Jon done or seen or found something dangerous to Elias, something that made him a threat to Elias? Possibly…

Martin was going to need more information. But if there was any chance that Elias was a threat to Jon, well. His intellectual exercise about bringing down someone who could see or know everything might have to get a whole lot less hypothetical.


	54. Chapter 54

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin plots.

This was how to defeat somebody who could see anything.

1\. Don’t be worth looking at. Martin was used to being the least competent person in the room; while other people went out and got useful things done, he’d be cleaning up or making the tea or caring for the injured. His social skills had never been fantastic, either. Being overlooked wasn’t hard. Of course, Elias had been giving him some attention – he’d gone down to see what he was doing in the tunnels, for instance, and might have even used him to lure on into the tunnel to try to kill him. Oh god, Jane Prentiss had followed him to the Institute, too – had Elias used him to lure her as well? Not immediately relevant. Put a pin in that one. The important thing was to remain unobtrusive while Sasha was out there being competent, and Tim was being angry, and Melanie was plotting murder, and Mary was being a monster, and Jon was being the Archivist. Give Elias plenty of things to monitor that weren’t Martin.

2\. When possible, don’t make visibly suspicious moves. Don’t go into unmonitorable areas unnecessarily, don’t have unnecessary suspicious conversations, don’t look for information you don’t need or write things down you don’t have to. Better not to make moves you don’t have to. Which is why Martin was doing his thinking while he sat and sipped his tea, and not writing anything down.

3\. When it is necessary to make a visibly suspicious move, make it appear that you’re doing it for a different reason. If you want to look up suspicious information, digitise a statement about that topic first, and pick up what you need while following up the statement. Check out library books that have the information you want only if they’re also related to work, or the Unknowing, or some hobby that you’ve manoeuvred somebody else (not you!) into suggesting to you. Anything potentially dangerous that you might do, do in a manner that a potential watcher will assume is for a different reason. Make them unsuspicious or, if suspicion is unavoidable, confidently suspicious about the wrong thing. If they’re sure in their conclusions, they won’t waste time and energy investigating – after all, there are so many more dangerous people to monitor than you.

4\. When it is necessary to make a suspicious move and there’s no way to disguise it, time your actions so that the watcher has something far more important to monitor, and hope you slip by unnoticed. It’s best to avoid having to do this at all, or at least do it while your watcher still has time to become suspicious and react, but if it is necessary, do it when he’s busy.

These were the rules Martin ad developed for investigating and, if necessary, taking down Elias. He knew he should be terrified of Elias, of what he could do; he was, he had been since he’d found out about his abilities, but… well, the threat of retaliation was distant, because that meant Martin had screwed up, and Martin didn’t plan on screwing up.

Weird, to be operating under the assumption that he wouldn’t screw up for once. A trauma symptom, from being buried alive? Possible. Better keep an eye on that, see if it indicated something more harmful. Might also be temporary, so he should get as much done as he could while he had this distant sort of confidence, where everything felt safely at arm’s length.

He cracked his knuckles (that antifungal cream was finally working again and he had most of his left hand back; hopefully it’d kill off the fungus properly this time), washed his mug, and went back to work.

“How are things going?” he asked Sasha as he walked in. She had her work computer in front of her and a laptop on her lap, and earbuds connected to a different device in each ear, but still answered.

“We should have a new rule where we don’t send Tim and Melanie out together. Their ‘jokes’ about just cutting things short and burning the wax museum down now are getting worryingly serious.”

“If we did that, they’d just regroup and we’d have to do all this again later.”

“I mentioned that. Know what Tim said?”

“Was it something along the lines of ‘great, then we get to burn it all down again’?”

“Got it in one. Oh, and Mary’s nearly back from the Carter investigation, so we’re going to need some more statement follow-up to keep her out of the office.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got one that’ll send her to Northampton.”

“Nice.”

Jon poked his had out of his office. “Sasha, the Circus is getting a skin delivered from America.”

“For the Dancer?”

“I have to assume so.”

“Whose skin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, when’s it arriving?”

“No idea.”

“How? By plane, I assume?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“You know, the Eye could stand to be a little more useful with its information.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He shut the office door again.

“Do you ever think our workplace is kind of weird?” Martin asked.

Sasha shrugged. “Couldn’t say. Haven’t worked at enough evil fear temples to know how they normally work. But I guess I gotta illegally check for packages being sent from America now to give us a timeline on this skin, so can you take over talking Tim and Melanie out of going on a Circus killing spree?”

“I don’t think they’re really going to listen to – ”

“Thanks.” Sasha handed him a phone and the attached earbuds, then started typing at her computer.

Martin remembered when their jobs had mostly involved filing.

\-----------------------

  
  


Melanie caught the stupid grin on Tim’s face and rolled her eyes. “If you make one joke about this being a date, Tim Stoker, I swear I’ll break your jaw.”

He held up both hands. “Wouldn’t dare, Mel. Would not dare.”

Melanie ignored the hated nickname, in the name of civility, and cocked her head. “Oh, you wouldn’t dare? Are you calling me intimidating, huh?” A cornered look flitted across his face, and she laughed. “You’re too easy, Tim.”

He gave a faux pout. “Next time, I’m doing stakeout with Sasha. Sasha isn’t _mean_ to me.”

“Liar.”

“You can do it with Martin. Martin isn’t mean to anyone.”

“That’s not true. Once I nearly killed a spider before he could save it and he gave me tea without any sugar.”

“I can hear you, you know,” came Martin’s tinny voice through their earbuds.

“Yeah yeah.” Melanie raised her phone and tapped at the screen like she was playing a game to hide the fact that she was once again filming the street outside over Tim’s shoulder. Most of the people walked past looked normal, even the ones they’d identified as serving the Stranger, but a few showed up… oddly… on the feed. A lazy assumption would be that monsters didn’t show up right and human servants did, but she knew that was wrong because she’d experimentally filmed Mary before and she showed up fine. Yet the footage she’d taken of Sarah Baldwin on a camera all that time ago had turned out as corrupted as what her phone was currently showing her of the old man ambling slowly past. Had the corruption been because of Sarah, or the thing she’d spoken to? If only she’d thought to get some footage of Sarah in the van or something…

There was a whole world of paranormal research out here that Ghost Hunt UK had been completely blind to. They’d been chasing spectres in old hotels and factories, leaving well alone the proper, dangerous hauntings. And when Melanie had gone after those ones, even then she was playing in the kiddie pool with no real idea of what was happening; once she got to the Institute, and learned about the fears, she’d seen that the occasional haunted battlefield was such a minor sliver of what was going on as to be boring. And the Institute just… sat there, with everything, with the truth, and told _no one_ , not even most of the researchers! They buried Smirke’s taxonomy on shelves of books of complete nonsense and just… let Elias and the archives and who knew who else quietly work with the truth while everyone else wasted their time on nonsense.

God, that pissed Melanie off. How much better could her pre-Institute life’s work have been if she’d actually known what was going on?

Come to think of it, what was stopping her from telling everyone how it worked? Start another youtube channel, lay out the fears, go hunt ghosts and spooky things on weekends. No one would stop her, right? Investigating the paranormal was what she was supposed to do. And then…

The internet would call her nuts and no one would watch her videos. Because the fear stuff all sounded stupid, unless you had access to a massive archive of supernatural occurrences and the research of a whole bunch of stored artefacts. As a paranormal investigator youtube channel, it would sound like fiction. And being headed by the GHOST FREAKOUT UK girl, who now worked at the joke that was the Magnus Institute, wouldn’t help.

Ugh. Why was her life LIKE this.

“So I’m thinking,” Tim said conversationally, “we just burn the building? Like… just go get a bunch of petrol or whatever, burn it right now.”

“I’m not going to jail for arson,” Melanie said, not looking up from the phone. “Also, this area’s probably full of Circus with weird powers we couldn’t take on.”

“Exactly,” Martin’s voice said. “See, Melanie’s – ”

“We need to organise this properly. Use Jon’s powers to blackmail some cops, shoot the place up.”

“Why do I bother?” replied Martin.

“Do you think bullets will work on these things? I could’ve sworn I just saw a mannequin walk past.”

“Nobody out there is freaking out, so you must’ve been seeing things. Unless you’re getting spooky powers like Jon.”

“Oh god, I hope not.”

“Well, we don’t know whether any of us are, y’know, involved enough to get them, so keep an eye out.”

“An eye out? Was that supposed to be a pun?”

“It wasn’t, but I can see that it annoys you so it is now, retroactively, a pun.”

“Oh, you do not want to start a pun war with me, Melanie King.”

“He’s right,” Martin’s voice said. “You don’t.”

“Thank you, Martin. Also, alternate mannequin proposal – I did see one, and nobody reacted because everyone in this area except us is involved.”

That was… an uncomfortable thought. Did that mean the Circus would know they were being monitored, simply because two people who weren’t with them were hanging around all day? Were they about to be attacked? Melanie’s hand went to her pocket, where she’d started keeping a knife.

Tim must have seen the change in her expression, because he quickly said “A joke! A joke. The cashier looks _way_ too fed up to be part of an apocalypse. Jesus.”

Melanie tried to relax, but it had just hit home just how much danger they were in. She scanned the faces of the people in the coffee shop, the people walking by, the bored cashier.

And wondered how many of those people were involved in the Unknowing. How many of them the archives crew were going to have to kill.


	55. Chapter 55

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon is going for the Most Kidnappable Avatar Award.
> 
> Contains police brutality.

**Contains police brutality**

\--------------------------

Jon had been expecting to die for awhile now. Not in a fatalistic way, just in the sense that of all the things that kept happening to him, one of them was eventually going to get him. He’d expected to be eaten by worms or killed by an evil mannequin or to die underground or some such thing; the only real question was when.

Being taken out by something so mundane as a random mugging in an alley on the way home from work at nearly midnight, though? That was a surprise.

This thought flashed through his mind as something heavy hit him on the back of the head. He stumbled, but didn’t get a chance to fall; someone was behind him, hand around his throat to hold him up, something cold and metal in his mouth…

A knife. They were holding a knife against his tongue to stop him from talking. Jon remained very, very still.

A vaguely familiar female voice spoke in his ear. “You are going to stay very still. You are not going to try to talk. If you do, I will kill you. Do you understand? Just nod.”

Jon nodded carefully, trying not to cut himself.

The hand around his throat disappeared. Jon couldn’t bring himself to feel relieved at this; he was pretty sure that a good thrust of the knife in his mouth could just as easily cut his throat open from the inside. His captor ran her free hand over him, searching him. She found his wallet and phone, extracted them, and dropped them on the ground.

Not a mugger, then. That was… a lot worse.

“You are going to answer my questions,” she said, “clearly and concisely. You are not going to say anything else. If you try to ask me a question, I will kill you. If you try to move, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

Jon nodded again. The knife was repositioned against his throat.

“Where is the C4?”

Fuck. It was one of the Stranger’s servants, and they knew about the C4. Hey needed the element of surprise to blow up –

The knife pressed into his throat, cutting skin.

“I don’t know!” he gasped, and the knife relented.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t. I’m not handling… that part.”

“Who does know?”

Jon stayed silent. The knife pressed again; he hissed in pain, but said nothing.

“Answer the question.”

“No.”

“Answer the question,” his captor insisted, “or I will kill you.”

“Seems like you’ve made up your mind to kill me anyway. I’m not putting them in danger, too.”

“If I have to cut my way through your little posse of terrorists one by one I’ll – ”

Jon kicked her kneecap. He felt the knife slide across his throat as she stumbled and he pitched forward, but before he had a chance to run he found himself flat on the ground, face pressed to the concrete with his captor on his back. The knife was laid across the side of his neck, under his ear, where he knew there was an artery.

As for his current throat wound… he couldn’t inspect it, but it didn’t seem deep. He could breather, and the blood pooling under his face wasn’t an alarming amount. Even if he was dying, just what was he supposed to do about it?

“What is the C4 for?” the woman asked.

Wait, what? How could she not know… if she knew they had it, it should be obvious to the Circus what it was…?

The knife pressed, and he hurriedly answered. “It’s to blow up the wax museum.”

“What wax museum?”

“How can you not – ? No, sorry, I didn’t mean to – uh, Louis Toussad’s wax museum. In Yarmouth.”

“Why?”

“You’re not going to believe – ”

“Why?”

“To save the world. That’s the ritual site. For the, uh… for the apocalypse.” Jon winced as he said it.

The woman chuckled quietly. “So you’re not just a terrorist cell of weird researchers, you’re also somehow an apocalypse cult. Fantastic.”

“I guess we sort of are.”

“Right. Onto the next one, I suppose.”

Jon felt the knife press against his jugular and knew he was going to die.

“Daisy, stop.”

The blade stopped. Jon looked up. Was that Basira? Basira Hussain? And ‘Daisy’… yes, he could place the voice now. The detective who’d saved him from the van.

What in the hell was going on?!

“What are you doing here?” Daisy asked.

“You’ve got what you need. Let him go. You promised.”

“I promised I wouldn’t go after your pet monster for the dreams,” Daisy growled. “Now he’s part of a terrorist cell trying to blow up a wax museum. Unless he’s got any more useful information, there’s no reason to keep him alive.”

‘Onto the next one’, she’d said. Searching for the person who knew where the C4 was. Oh god, she was going to work her way through his staff…

The knife, at his jugular again. “I do know something else!” he gasped.

“Tell me.”

“I know… I can take you to my boss. He’ll tell you everything. You’ll know it’s true, because I can ask him, I can make him tell you… you won’t have to go after anyone else.”

There were several long seconds where nobody moved.

Then, the knife was removed. Daisy got off his back.

“Right. Get up. Don’t try to run.”

Jon didn’t think he could run. He got to his feet, trembling, and tried not to think about how much blood was plastered on his face and soaked into his shirt.

“Someone’s gonna call the cops if he walks out onto the streets like that,” Basira observed.

“Go get your car, then. We can keep him in your PI office until morning and question the boss then.”

“Don’t kill him when I’m gone.”

“If he doesn’t run, I won’t have to.”

Jon, for his part, stood still and shut up. That seemed to be the best survival tactic so far.

He was driven to Basira’s office. It was… well, fairly nice, for what he’d expect of a private investigator’s office. Little office bit up front, small private bathroom, storage closet where she’d put a cot ‘for when I have to work late’ (Jon had a similar setup in the archives), coffee station.

“I’ll get you some clothes for tomorrow so we don’t call the entire London police force down on us walking down the street,” Basira said. “If you try to run – ”

“I’m not going to run,” Jon said irritably. “Even if I thought I could – and that woman jumped out of a moving truck carrying me once, so I don’t fancy my chances against her – questioning Elias was my idea. If I escaped, she’d probably just start cutting up my assistants for information, wouldn’t she? I’m not letting that happen.”

“Daisy wouldn’t do that.”

“No? Would you have thought she’d do it to me?”

“Hey, you’re the nutters who are trying to blow up a building! You can’t judge her for trying to protect people.”

“I wasn’t judging… look. I’m not going to run. Okay?”

“Right.” She headed for the door.

“Basira.”

“Mmm?”

“Thank you.”

“… What?”

“This is the second time you’ve saved my life, by my count. And I haven’t… given you much reason to trust me. So, thanks. I owe you.”

“Yeah. You do.” She left.

Jon poked through her cabinets until he found a first aid kit, and went to clean up. Another hole on his Frequent Kidnapping Punch Card, he supposed.

\---------------------------------

  
  


Martin had a plan.

It wasn’t a great plan, yet. There were too many possible points of failure. There were too many highly suspicious things he’d have to do. But it was a _start_.

He was going to send Elias to jail.

He needed to remove Elias as head of the Institute before Melanie managed to kill him, and therefore kill them all. He needed to stop Elias from trying to kill Jon (and buy himself some time to figure out what the hell was going on there). And it should be pretty doable; it wasn’t like Elias wasn’t guilty as hell of multiple crimes.

The obvious method was to have Jon force him to confess to Gertrude’s murder on tape, but Martin dismissed that strategy out of hand. It put Jon in danger, which wasn’t acceptable. Also, it wouldn’t work. A taped confession isn’t evidence when the confessor can just shrug and say it isn’t true, he was tricked, especially when he’s a wealthy man who the police would rather not bother with. If they had footage of the actual murder, that would be different, but that was unlikely to exist, and even if they proved Jon’s powers to the police, the whole trial would… well. Things would get messy and unpredictable.

There were better ways to do things. Ways that Elias wouldn’t be able to wriggle out of, and didn’t need to involve Jon at all. Once he worked out all the little kinks that doomed his plan to failure.

But hey, once he’d done that, no problem.


	56. Chapter 56

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone bothers Elias.

Jon tried to make himself look presentable, but there’s only so much you can do with a badly sized shirt, a tiny bathroom sink, a very small first aid kit and multiple throat injuries. None of Daisy’s little warnings were deep enough to be dangerous, he didn’t think, but they sure looked startling. How was he supposed to explain this at the A&E later? Although they were used enough to him right now, they probably wouldn’t even question it. They probably had a “Code Sims” for whatever nonsense he brought them every month or so.

The trio swept past the front desk, with Jon sparing Rosie a little wave, first thing in the morning. Technically, Daisy and Basira shouldn’t be allowed through without signing in, but they both projected very strong We Belong Here vibes as they walked in with a well-known employee while Rosie was still setting up, so they weren’t stopped.

Jon knew that Elias, like him, tended to get in very early and start work immediately. Maybe being a workaholic was an Eye thing? No, Jon had been like that before becoming the Archivist.

They swept into Elias’ office without knocking. He looked up from some files, entirely unsurprised to see them. “Of course, come on in, Jon. Detectives.”

“I’m actually not a – ”

“Are you trying to blow up a wax museum?” Daisy asked.

“Me? No. I’m aware of the project, of course, but it’s in the hands of the Archivist here.”

Daisy rounded on Jon, who took several steps back, hands raised.

“I’ll ask you not to hurt him, Detective, or I shall have to call security. He’s cut up enough, don’t you think? Jon, you really should get that checked out at hospital.”

“Oh, you’re going to call security?” Daisy asked. “You’re trying to blow up a building! I should call the police!”

“I was under the impression that you _were_ the police, Detective Tonner. Interesting that you’re here today without any backup, partnered with somebody who is in fact, not police. This is all going to be rather awkward for you to explain when it comes time to make the arrests, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know – ”

“Of course, silly me, making assumptions about arrests. I suppose you’re planning to handle this as more of a Calvin Benchley situation.”

“… How do you know that name?”

“I know a lot of things, Detective Tonner, and I endeavoured to find out more once you started skulking around my Institute like a starving stray mongrel. I know about Calvin, and Herrod, and Alina… and I know about Constable Curry. Sort of lost control of that one, didn’t you? Do a fellow officer, too. Terrible.”

“You didn’t see what he did to those girls!”

“I’ve seen what you’ve done, and not all of your victims turned out to be the monsters you thought they were, did they? Yet the state protects you, every time. You just couldn’t hold to the code with Curry.”

Daisy drew her gun and aimed it at Elias. Jon quickly stepped between them. “No!” He was not going to let himself and his staff die just because Elias wanted to piss off a cop with anger issues.

“Get out of the way,” Daisy growled.

“You should listen to him,” Elias said. “He’s trying to save you. See, I’m not a fool, Detective Tonner. I’ve made records of your many, many crimes, complete with the various scraps of evidence you’re very sloppily left behind – although I did have to manufacture quite a bit of that myself, I’ll admit – and set it to be sent to your superiors if I don’t stop it in time. They won’t care about most of the crimes, of course – that’s what they employ you for, after all – but they will care about the evidence. They will care about the hints that someone might be about to tip off several news networks. And they will care about constable Curry. Pull that trigger if you like, but you know what cleanup of these sorts of operations looks like. Especially when it involves traitors. Say, you were partnered with Basira on a lot of these sorts of cases, weren’t you? You and I know that you always kept her out of your messier activities, but will the people they send after you believe that, I wonder?”

“I have no reason to believe you.”

Elias shrugged. “You brought the Archivist.”

Jon didn’t think this was a good time to voice his annoyance about being talked about like he wasn’t there. “Elias, ave you set up this evidence to be sent to the police if you don’t stop it?”

“Yes. I am, of course, willing to halt that and hand all copies of said evidence to you, detective, in exchange for some… alternate insurance.”

“What alternate insurance?” Jon asked.

“This.” He pulled a sheet of paper out from the pile of forms he was perusing. “For you, Miss Hussain. I’ve taken the liberty of filling most of the sheet out for you, so if you’re interested, all you need to do is sign.”

Basira skimmed the sheet, bafflement clear on her face. “An employment contract?”

“Don’t sign that, Basira,” Jon cut in.

Elias ignored him. “Your skills would make you an invaluable addition to the team.”

Basira and Daisy exchanged a confused look.

“I, um… I already have a job, actually?”

“I am aware. But it’s a tough world for small business owners, isn’t it? Is your little investigation firm really making enough to pay the bills? Surely a stable income would help. I wouldn’t even ask you to quit your current job; we can put you on part time hours here, if you like. I think you’ll find each job to be a huge advantage in the other, in fact.”

“Uh… right, but…”

“And of course, you and Daisy can avoid the fatal unpleasantness of her various crimes being found out.”

“Don’t sign it,” Jon said. “You don’t want to work here. I can just ask him where the evidence is and – ”

“Really, Jon, do you think I wouldn’t have taken precautions against that?” Elias asked impatiently. “I don’t see why you’re so dead-set against working with Basira. At this stage, you need all the help you can get, and her experience in investigation is a big asset. I understand the archives are getting a little crowded, so I’ll requisition your team some more space, but – ”

“You can’t just keep trapping people – ”

“Done,” Basira said, handing the form back to Elias.

“Capital!” Elias stood up and shook her hand. “Welcome aboard. Now, Detective Tonner – ”

“This evidence. Where is it?”

“Not within my immediate reach. I’ll get it for you tonight, when I don’t have a gun pointed at my face. In the meantime, though, I’d like to offer you the opportunity to work here, too. Should you wish. No threats attached, this time.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“Ah, my mistake. I assumed that this little… episode… might be indicative of a preference for working with Basira, rather than the police, since you don’t seem to have involved any of them. If you’re happy in your current line of work I won’t press you, but please consider the offer open indefinitely. I’m sure that once Basira is settled, she can bring you around to the numerous advantages that working in the archives could bring you, and perhaps we can reopen this discussion then.” He sat back down. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I am actually rather busy. Jon, why don’t you get your new assistant up to speed on the current situation? I’m sure she’ll be eager to get involved.”

So the three of them trailed out of Elias’ office. There didn’t seem to be any alternatives.

“What just happened?” Basira asked.

Jon shrugged. “Circumstances tend to change fast around here, when Elias is involved. You get used to it. Come on; I’ll update you on the archives. You should probably come too, Detective Tonner – ”

“I told you to call me Daisy.”

“Right. Well, I can show you the whole wax museum thing, and hopefully answer most of your questions.” He lead the way down to the archives.

This was not how he’d expected his morning to go.

\-----------------------

  
  


This was not how Tim had expected his morning to go.

He got into work a little early to find Jon already there, cradling a cup of tea. That wasn’t unusual. Loitering in the corner in an ill-fitting shirt with blood starting to seep through the fresh bandages on his neck was a little weird, but it was the two police from the Gertrude murder reading stuff on Mary’s work computer and surrounded by paper statements that really threw him.

“Um,” he said.

“Good morning, Tim,” Jon said in the weary tones of one who’d run out of surprise and just decided to go with whatever the day threw at them. “Basira works here now. And we’re helping Daisy with her personal investigation into a stolen van full of C4.”

“… Oh. Are we?”

“I can set them,” Daisy spoke up.

“What?”

“The explosives. You don’t have to use your… construction worker.”

“How do you know – ?” Jon shut up at her glare. “Sorry. Didn’t think.”

“Seems pretty common for you.”

“You can use C4.”

“Yeah.”

“Right. Good. That… would be a lot easier. Thank you.”

“Not doing it for you.”

“Right.”

“What,” Tim cut in, “the hell is going on? Actually, no – don’t bother. You’re gonna have to explain this to everyone else too and I really don’t want to have to sit through it multiple times.”

Just then, he got a text. Martin.

_Can you distract Elias for about 10 min? Don’t put yourself in danger._

He texted back.

_Im not scared of Elias. Ill come up with smth._

Martin replied immediately.

_Let me know when he’s distracted._

Tim almost asked what he needed the distraction for, then decided against it. When your mission is ‘distract the mind reader’, putting the thing you wanted to distract him from in your own brain was probably a terrible idea. The next question: what distraction?

He’d love to piss Elias off, but he had lied to Martin – he was scared of Elias. Of course he was. But Elias only really had one big thing to use against him, and he wasn’t going to waste it on something trivial. As soon as Elias showed him Danny’s death, he was out of ammo. So Tim just needed to stay under that line, and he’d be fine.

Yeah. Everything would be fine.


	57. Chapter 57

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New allies are made.

Tim was still trying to jimmy open the safe in Elias’ office when Elias appeared in the doorway, scowling. Tim swore quietly.

“Just what is this about, Tim?”

“I sort of expected you to be evacuating with everyone.”

“Yes, well, the last time the fire alarm was pulled around here it turned out to be due to a worm invasion, so I thought it prudent to actually check for a fire. And I found you trying to break into my safe. What are you doing?”

“Can’t you just look into my mind and find out?”

Elias rubbed his temples. “Tim, I thought we were past this.”

“If you must know, I was trying to find out where you keep our employment contracts.”

“You thought the employment contracts for a research institute would be in my office?”

“Seemed the best place to start looking. If they’re powerful.”

“If they…? Ah. I see. You thought that if you destroyed your employment contract, it might break your tie to the Institute.”

Tim shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“They’re not in here, Tim. But don’t worry; it wouldn’t have worked. Things are rather more complicated than that, I’m afraid. Lawyers and soforth might use paper to prove your past actions, but the Watcher needs no such thing. Destroying something does not change the fact that you signed it.”

"Damn."

“I’m surprised you’re attempting this so close to the Unknowing. I would’ve thought you’d want to be around for that.”

“Yeah, well, I have my future after the Unknowing to think about. You know, assuming we don’t all die. And the world doesn’t end.”

“Is this going to be an ongoing problem again? Because I’d rather you didn’t force my hand against you, Tim.”

Tim threw up his own hands in a theatrical surrender. “I’m going, I’m going. So sorry for the lost productivity of a false fire alarm, boss.” He rolled his eyes.

“You also appear to have damaged my safe.”

“I’m sure the Institute’s incredibly suspicious funding streams can handle it.” He slipped past Elias and off down the hall before the man could read his mind. Or put anything into his mind.

Hopefully, he’d bought Martin enough time.

\----------------------

  
  


Martin took a sip of tea and was surprised to find that it was, in fact, exceptional. “This is really good!”

“I’m always careful about my selection of tea,” Mike Crew said. “How can I help you? Your Archivist decide he needed more from me, but didn’t want to show up himself?”

Martin grimaced. “Sorry about him. He can be a bit… well. You saw.”

“Indeed.”

Martin’s phone beeped. He glanced at it.

“You need to get that?”

“No, it’s just a friend saying that the boss is sufficiently distracted. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here. In fact, Mr Crew – ”

“Mike.”

“Right. I’m here to give information to you.”

Mike laughed. “A bit out of character for your lot, isn’t it?”

“Thus the distraction. We probably don’t have long, so I’ll get right to the point. Ex Altiora showed up in our collection the other day.”

“Huh. I was wondering where it had gotten to.”

“Quite. Our researchers have found something trapped inside it and, having the self-preservation skills typical to researchers, have decided to try to let it out.”

The change in Mike’s demeanour was immediate. He sat up, put his cup down, and paled significantly. “They can’t!”

“They rather think they can. Obviously, it’s a bad idea, and I thought that you in particular would want to know about it.”

“Why would you tell me, though?”

“Our Archivist was rude to you, and your response was… admirably restrained. I thought one good turn deserves another. I think things work better for everyone when we all get along, don’t you?”

“If you want to get along, can you help me get it out of their hands?”

“Maybe. I’ll see what I can find out, and keep you informed. We should have some time before they figure out how to release it, so there’s no need to panic yet.” Martin put his cup down and stood up. “I should go. I don’t know how long Elias is going to be distracted. Thank you for the tea, Mike.”

“Any time, Martin.”

There. One piece set up. Mike thought he’d learned more than Martin had meant to tell him, Elias probably hadn’t noticed a thing but if he had then he’d assume that Martin was recruiting allies for the Unknowing and had failed. The only potential point of weakness was if Elias realised he was being distracted and wondered why, but Martin could easily play up some nonsense about why he’d wanted to keep his recruiting a secret, if it came to that. It probably wouldn’t. He just hoped that Tim hadn’t put himself in danger.

Martin didn’t like that part. Part of not being worth looking at meant having other people do the flashy stuff, and sometimes that meant the dangerous stuff. He did _not_ want Tim in danger on his behalf. Or at all. The archive crew were… well, friends, obviously. But also natural allies. They were trapped together; taking care of each other was the _only_ option.

Tim was probably alright. Surely. But even if he was, Martin shouldn’t have put him in danger; he should’ve been smart enough to find another way. He should’ve been able to make a better strategy. If he could get better at that, he could take better care of everyone.

He needed to up his game.

\------------------------

“So,” Jon said, looking around at the archives staff, minus Mary and plus Daisy. “Any questions?”

“I have one,” Martin said. “What happened to your neck?”

“He said I was investigating the stolen van,” Daisy pointed out.

“ _You_ did that to him?”

Jon rubbed his temples. “Can we all just… can we all just get past that and focus on the Unknowing?”

“Just wondering, Jon,” Martins said, “whether you’ve got some kind of scar quota. Like, is there a rule that you need to have some kind of open wound at all times? Is that part of being the Archivist?”

“It’s really not a big deal.”

“Have you been to the hospital yet?”

“I was busy. It’s fine.”

“You’re going to the hospital. Right after this.”

“Fine, I’ll – ”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Martin, I can get myself to the hospital.”

“You sure about that?”

Jon sighed. “Any relevant questions?”

“Yeah,” Daisy said. “When do I get to meet your pet monster?”

“Ah. That… might not be the best idea. We’re keeping her out of the Unknowing stuff, for obvious reasons.”

“Could still just kill her,” Tim put in. “Or lock her up somewhere. Elias was kind enough to pay for this lovely secure safe.”

“Sounds like he’s got the right of it,” Daisy said. “Can’t just have a monster walking around trying to end the world while you’re trying to stop the end of the world.”

“You don’t even know her,” Melanie snapped. “She’s not trying to end the world.”

“Really? Then why isn’t she here in this room?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes it is,” Tim said.

“Okay,” Jon said, “that’s not… we’ll deal with Mary if we have to and when we have to. But she did save my life, okay? Her and Martin. Let’s not forget that.”

“I refrained from killing you,” Daisy said. “Same thing.”

“It really isn’t. Sasha, do we know anything about that American skin? Its arrival is sure to give us a better timeline for the Unknowing.”

“Nope. Sorry. I’m trying to monitor things, but unless the package is addressed to the museum there’s… not really that much I can do to find which one it is. There are a lot of packages being sent.”

“Why not just go to that taxidermy place?” Basira asked. “Find a taxidermied person and Archivist them about the end of the world.”

“Element of surprise,” Sasha said. “We don’t want them to know that we know when and where they are. Also, Jon would get murdered.”

“I can handle that,” Daisy said.

“Wasn’t looking for volunteer murderers,” Tim said.

“I meant, I can protect him. With Basira’s help. And if the monster doesn’t get to report back to the circus, then we don’t lose the element of surprise.”

Jon nodded, hesitantly. “Could work. But I’d, I’d rather not kill anyone.”

“Isn’t the whole plan to blow everyone up?” Basira asked. “Isn’t that what we’re doing all this for?”

“Okay, yeah. Good point.”

“Right. Come on, Basira; we’ve got some planning to do.”

“Don’t…” Jon hesitated. “I mean, I don’t want you to be late for your actual police job.”

Daisy gave him a pitying look and left the room, Basira behind her.

“So,” Sasha said, looking up from her phone. “I guess this is happening now.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.” Jon rubbed his temples. He couldn’t wait for the Unknowing to be over, so they could have some time and space to try to figure out what ‘normal’ was any more.


	58. Chapter 58

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Get fucked Sarah

Martin cupped his warm coffee cup in his cold hands and looked up at the Magnus Institute.

It was an old building, and suitably impressive, if a little anachronistic. Once, the unusually large windows that looked into every room (fitting for a place that served the Eye, he supposed) were probably covered in stately curtains, not cheap Venetian blinds that prevented anyone from seeing into the offices, and the grand facade wouldn’t have been partly hidden behind a filthy bus shelter advertising Burrito Wars II: The Taco’s Revenge. But it was still impressive, in its own way.

“Not tea today?” Mary asked from across the little cafe table.

“Didn’t get much sleep. Need the caffeine. You know, last time I was at this cafe, we found a Leitner.”

“Sasha said. I really hate those books.”

“I thought you couldn’t use them?”

“I can’t, but I’ve typed up enough statements of the awful things they do.”

Martin nodded and sipped his coffee. “End of the world soon, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

“Still not gonna tell us when, where or what they’re doing, huh?”

“I don’t know any of that.”

“I bet you could find out, though. If you wanted. Aren’t you curious?”

“Why? So Jon can pull the information out of me? Safer if I don’t know.”

“Mary…”

“Don’t. Don’t try to… convert me to the Eye.”

“I wasn’t. I was just trying to ‘convert’ you to, well, basic humanity. To save the world we’re in.”

“Same thing!” Mary snapped. “That’s exactly the same thing as serving the Eye or the Vast or anyone except the Stranger, because if the Dance fails, someone else will succeed. The world is going to end; I can’t stop that and neither can you. You’re asking me to let it end on someone else’s terms, so give up my only chance of seeing a tolerable future, and I can’t do that, okay? I’m not going to _sell out the entire world for eternity_ just to buy another month or year or whatever of this world. I’m sorry.”

“Who says someone else will win? Maybe we’ll stop all the rituals.”

“I doubt it. And even if you did, this would happen again in another century or two, and we’d be having this same argument. So we’d only be buying a little time, and it’s still not worth the risk.”

A couple on a lunch date at the next table shot them strange looks. Martin wondered if this was an ideal conversation to be having in public.

“But you understand that we have to try to stop it,” he said.

“Yeah. I get it. I’ve been reading dramas.” She tapped her fingers restlessly on the table. A new little human affectation, Martin noticed; he wondered who she’d learned it from. “I’m scared, Martin.”

“You can feel fear?”

“I don’t know. It feels like fear to me. I hope you don’t find the ritual site. If you guys don’t know and I don’t know, the whole thing can just…”

“Succeed or fail on its own, and we don’t have to try to stop each other?”

“Yeah.”

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. They already knew where, what, and what to do. And they were prepared to do it.

They just needed a when.

\--------------------

  
  


“You can come in,” Basira called.

The statement had been right; the taxidermist’s shop was creepy. Blank glass eyes stared at him from every surface, as well as the face of the young woman tied to a chair in the centre of the room.

He recognised her, of course. “Sarah.”

“Archivist.”

“We gonna do this or have a cheery reunion?” Daisy asked.

“Do we have to do it in here?” Jon asked. “I don’t like the way all those animals are looking at me.”

“Yes, we do. They’re dead.”

“We can’t be sure about that.”

“Well the longer we sit around chatting, the longer we have to deal with them.”

Jon sighed. “Sarah, when will the Unknowing take place?”

Sarah gritted her teeth against the question, but eventually relented. “Monday night, if the skin arrives on time.”

“Whose skin?”

“Johann Wolfgang’s.”

The Mechanical Turk guy? So far as Jon suddenly Knew, he’d died in Vienna. Why was his skin coming from America? How did… no, never mind. Stay on topic.

“How is the skin being shipped in?”

“I don’t know.”

“What time Monday night is the Unknowing going to start?”

“It depends. It’s hard to predict how long it will take to set everything up. I don’t know the details.”

“Alright. Thank you, Sarah; you’ve been very helpful.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“You two should clear out,” Daisy said.

Basira shook her head. “I’ll help you.”

“I’ve got it, Basira. Protect Sims.”

“Yeah,” Jon cut in. “We never know when some rogue police officer might jump me an an alley with a knife.”

“Get out of here, Sims.”

“Right you are.”

He left, Basira trailing reluctantly after him, leaving Daisy to a room of sawdust, dry skin and her stash of gasoline. He could almost make himself feel bad about Sarah Baldwin, even though she was a shell being worn by a world-ending monster, but then he recalled her arguing with Nikola in the delivery van that they could restrain him more securely with nails, and the feeling was gone.

And within the hour, so was the taxidermy shop.

\-------------------------------

  
  


The great thing about texting was that people did it all the time. The archives crew texted each other all the time about work, about the Unknowing, about all kinds of stuff. It wasn’t a remotely suspicious activity, and the chances that Elias would be looking at what Martin, of all people, was texting, on the off-chance he might be planning something, was miniscule.

Nevertheless, he was sure to keep his text unsuspicious, just in case, and merely sent Mike Crew a short message saying ‘ _We can do it Monday night, keep your schedule open, we’re making a plan but it won’t work without your help’_.

Anyone who saw that would obviously think that Martin was sneakily recruiting Mike’s help for the Unknowing behind Jon’s back. Probably for some silly personal reason.

“I’m going to get back to work,” Mary said. “I want to finish digitising 2003 today.”

Martin didn’t ask her why she was bothering, if she thought the world was going to end. He’d only get some response about how the world ending was in the future, and she was an archival assistant now.

“Mary,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“However this goes, I’m… glad we got to be friends.”

“Me, too,” she said with a sad little smile. She headed back towards the Institute, and Martin texted Tim. He watched Mary head into the building through the camera on his phone. The zoom on modern phone cameras was amazing. If you could see it, you could film it; often more clearly than the naked eye could see. He grinned. He was gonna point that out to Sasha, point out how advantageous that kind of vision was when, say, trying to bring down a building with an apocalypse ritual going on inside it.

The world may or may not end, but he was going out strong – he was gonna convince Sasha to buy herself a smartphone.

\--------------------

  
  


“I’m just saying, why did you even buy a safe if we’re not going to put anything in it?” Melanie asked. “Isn’t it for… delicate historical documents, or whatever?”

“That’s what I put on the form, yeah. But not what it’s actually for.” Tim winked.

“What’s it for, then?”

“It’s for costing the Institute a stupid amount of money. This was the biggest one I could get installed on short notice, top of the line. It was _so fucking expensive_.”

Mary walked in. “Hello!”

“Hi, Mary. Have a nice lunch?” Melanie asked.

“Yes! You should eat something.”

“I ate a cupcake.”

“Overindulgence in sugar isn’t – ”

“I know, I know! But Tim, your idea of wasting Institute money is a safe?”

Tim shrugged. “He won’t get any major renovations done. Although now that we’ve got so many people, we’re apparently getting more space, so I bet we can find something expensive that our new room will absolutely need, like… a second safe!”

Melanie rolled her eyes.

“Seriously though,” Tim said, “this thing is massive. Show her your trick, Mary.”

Mary grinned and climbed into the safe.

Tim shut the door and spun the dial. Then he relaxed. “I was a bit worried that wouldn’t work. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said. “You can let your pet monster out after we’ve saved the world. Although I _still_ think you shouldn’t.”

“You can’t stop me, though. You agreed not to.”

“Only because you wouldn’t help me get her in otherwise. I still think it’s a bad idea to have her around.”

“For the Unknowing… yeah, it is. But afterwards, if you try to – ”

Tim threw his hands up. “Jesus, why is everyone so aggressive around here these days? Two murdercops, you, and even Sasha and Martin still keep axes under their desks. The only people not on edge are me and Monsterboss.”

“You literally just locked a coworker in a safe. You’re on edge.”

“Oh god. Jon is the calm one. Oh god, no.”

“Is that bad?”

“It means our bar is set _so fucking low_. Remind me to tell you about his paranoid stalker phase sometime.”

“Worse than his current get-cut-up-by-everything phase?”

“They kind of overlapped. I mean, there were the worms.”

“You’re pretty scarred from those worms, too.”

“Yeah, but I can pull these scars off.” He gave an exaggerated model’s pose.

Melanie rolled her eyes. “The sad thing is, if we do save the world, I have to put up with this indefinitely. Which might be worse.”

“Actually I’m taking my annual leave right after this.”

“We get annual leave?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s the law. Elias might be an evil fuck who’s forcing us to work for a fear god but I’m sure even he fears the ombudsman. I’m gonna go kayaking.”

“Of course you are.”


	59. Chapter 59

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 110k words in and we're FINALLY at the end of Act 1 of this "short silly fic"

Jon stared at the detonator in his hand. “So we set up, everyone gets out, and when it’s time, I push this button.”

“That’s about it, yeah,” Daisy said. “Still think we’d be better with less people, but…”

“You want to bring less people to save the world?” Tim asked, knuckles white around his axe.

“More people means more chance of being discovered. Basira and I – ”

“Absolutely _no fucking way_ am I not going in there.”

“Tim’s coming in,” Jon said. “He’s good to have at your back and, to be perfectly honest, I think if we tried to make him stay behind he’d sneak in anyway. Better to all be working together.”

“Aww, you know me _so well_ , Monsterboss,” Tim said with a humourless grin.

Jon ignored this. “I’m going in, too. When the ritual starts, things are going to get confusing, and I’m the only one with any chance of seeing through it. Hopefully we can set up and get out and detonate from here, but if something goes wrong…”

“And I’m going in, too, obviously,” Basira said. “So this is the minimum number of people we can bring.”

“… Fine. Still don’t like it.”

“We’ll be quick as we can. In and out. Sasha, keep the engine warm.”

“No need to worry about that,” Sasha said from the driver’s seat. “The second you’re all back in this van we are out of here.”

“Right. Let’s do this, then.”

\-----------------------

  
  


“You’re certain this will work?” Mike asked as Martin met him a block from the Institute.

“No. But it’s our best shot. You distract him, I get the book while he’s not looking, you can… honestly I don’t care what you do with it after that.”

“You’re just happy to ‘help out’ someone who’ll owe you a favour.”

“You seem suspicious.”

“You’re betraying your own people for this, so… yes.”

“Worried I might be trying to set you up in some way, Mike?”

Mike snorted. “What would you have to gain from that? I just don’t want to be involved in whatever nonsense your lot are fighting with each other over. Besides, you’d know better than to do something like that, because…”

Martin’s feet weren’t under him any more. He collapsed to the pavement, gasping. He was falling… he could feel the pavement under him, it was there, but he was falling…

Then it was over. He stood up and brushed himself off. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“It was funny, though.”

“Not really. You’ll want to save some of that juice for your distraction; I don’t know how long it will take to break the book out of storage.”

“I think I can handle your _scary man who knows things_ just fine. Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

“You know where to go once I get you past the front desk?”

“The building isn’t complicated.”

“Right. Just checking.”

\------------------------------

  
  


Melanie had been expecting the text, but the still dreaded it.

_We’re in. Get ready to do your part._

She brushed back her hair with one hand, restyled to how it used to be before everything went wrong, took a deep breath, and texted Martin back.

_If this doesn’t work, I’m breaking your nose for humiliating me like this._

The reply was quick.

_If this doesn’t work, Elias won’t leave enough of me behind for you to break. Good luck._

Melanie got in her van and started the engine. This was going to suck.

She almost wished she was off blowing up the circus.

\----------------------------------

  
  


“Oh my god,” Jon gasped in horror. “They’re not waxworks.”

\---------------------------------

  
  


Elias looked up from his desk and scowled at the sunlight.

Trying to keep an eye on the Unknowing was difficult enough in itself, and his day had not been improved by walking into his office that morning and seeing FIRE ME YOU DICK spraypainted across his office blinds. Tim, presumably. The blinds had been removed, but there was some complication about their replacement, so for today, the room was inconveniently bright.

No matter. It wasn’t as if he was going to get any work done anyway, with the Unknowing taking place. Bringing on Daisy and Basira had ultimately been a good call; they could die doing the dangerous part, and Jon had a better chance of surviving.

Just get him through this, have him pick up the last few marks bumbling about on the search for other rituals… yes. This was doable.

And that was when Michael Crew burst in.

Elias recognised him, of course, although he’d never met him in person. What was he doing here? Now? Elias was certain he didn’t have any meetings all day.

“Mr Crew,” he said, trying to keep one eye on Daisy setting up explosives. “While I’m sure that whatever you’re here for is very important, this isn’t the best time – ”

“Well,” Mike growled, storming into the room (and gravitating towards the _window_ , of course, could he _be_ any more cliché), “make time.”

\------------------------------

  
  


Martin sat in the cafe, wearing an oversized hat and new jacket so that Mike wouldn’t recognise him if he did, by chance, happen to glance out the window. So far as Mike knew, Martin was breaking into artefact storage right now to retrieve a Leitner that artefact storage had never actually had, that had in fact been burned years ago by Gerard Keay, so Mike seeing him across the road watching the altercation on his phone would presumably make the man somewhat suspicious. Best to conceal himself.

But he did need to know what was going on. The timing here had to be perfect.

_Now. Now was the time._

He texted Melanie again.

\-----------------------------

  
  


The calliope music swelled, and throughout it wandered four saboteurs, lost. Except they weren’t saboteurs, they weren’t anything, they… I…

They wandered…

They…

\-----------------------------

  
  


The Ghost Hunt UK van drove clumsily down the road and skidded to a halt right before hitting the bus stop. Everyone on the street pulled out their phones, of course, since a potentially exciting accident seemed to be happening, and a few chattered excitedly about how it was the same van that had run over a mailbox and nearly hit a guy a few weeks back. How did the driver still have her license?

Excitement only rose when the Ghost Freakout UK girl jumped out, looked around wild-eyed, and yelled that a ghost was following her.

\------------------------

  
  


Good. The timing was good.

Martin sprinted back to the Institute. Next time he was making a plan that didn’t involve being in so many places at once.

\------------------------

  
  


They hadn’t gotten out in time. Jon was going to have to detonate the explosives from inside the ritual, and Elias couldn’t see him properly.

“I have not seen any book,” Elias snapped. “And you are a distraction that I cannot currently afford. Get out _now_ , or I’ll call security.” Things were really ramping up in the wax museum, and he’d lost Jon. Jon had lost Jon. He was going to need all his focus to keep an eye on –

“Oh, you’ll call security, will you?” Mike snarled.

And Elias was falling.

He gripped the side of his desk as he dropped through the floor to the level below. No; no, the floor was still there, he was still…

He couldn’t See, couldn’t breathe…

He should be stronger than this. He should be able to See through the stupid little party trick of a second-rate avatar like Mike Fucking Crew. But he couldn’t focus on his surroundings, couldn’t focus on Mike, couldn’t focus on the Unknowing and how his Archivist was doing, when _he couldn’t convince his lungs to breathe_.

He didn’t have _time_ for this.

He was going to have to get his hands dirty.

He _hated_ getting his hands dirty.

\------------------------------------

  
  


_Well, if I had any kind of credibility or respect left, it’s definitely gone now,_ Melanie thought distantly as she screamed about ghosts. _Even if this does get rid of that evil bastard, Martin owes me bigtime_.

How many cell phone cameras were pointed at her? A dozen, at least. Maybe two dozen. She pointed up at the window of the Magnus Institute, Elias Bouchard’s clear and open window, where a man she didn’t recognise stood dramatically in front of it pointing at Elias, who leaned on his desk.

“There!” she screamed. “There’s the ghost!”

Most of the cameras stayed on the crazy woman ranting in the street, of course.

But about a third of them moved up to the window.

\------------------------------------

  
  


Elias pulled the small handgun from his bottom drawer and let go of the Unknowing long enough to focus all of his attention on Michael Crew, to see exactly where he was, to line up a single clear shot.

\------------------------------------

  
  


_Well_ , Melanie thought as the office window broke and people started shouting and screaming, _that should overshadow any Ghost Freakout UK Sequel virality_.

And she got back in the van and drove off before people recovered enough to ask her any awkward questions.

\-------------------------------------

  
  


“You sound stressed. You know I hear the Great Grimaldi’s in town. You should go see it. Cheer yourself up.”

“That’s. Not. Funny.”

“I know.”

\---------------------------

  
  


Sasha knew something had gone very, very wrong when the building came down, and no one except Basira had emerged. She was up, climbing out of the van, running towards the… _no, no; don’t be stupid. It’s a collapsed building._

She forced herself to stop and dial emergency services.

\----------------------------

  
  


Elias eyed the corpse on his floor with some distaste. Clear-headed, he took another Look at the Unknowing.

Jon was unconscious, but not dead. Emergency services were on their way. The fate of everyone else mattered a lot less than the annoyance on his floor, so he turned back to Michael Crew, already concocting the story in his mind… Michael had burst in with a gun, ranting about a book; there had been a brief struggle in self-defense; Michael had been shot…

Martin burst in. “Elias, I heard a – ”

He stared at the corpse, the blood, the shattered window. At Elias, gun in his hand. His eyes widened.

“Ah. Martin. Be so good and go tell Rosie to call the police, will you? As you can see, their services are rather urgently required.”

Martin fled.

Well, this was annoying. But perfectly recoverable. Mike Crew was a mass murderer who had snuck into the Institute, become very aggressive to Elias, and had to be killed in legitimate self-defense. The only lie Elias intended to tell was who had drawn the gun.

\---------------------------

  
  


Martin felt kind of bad about sacrificing Mike Crew like that, until he remembered how many people Mike had killed. He wore his Totally Overwhelmed and Freaked Out face as he rounded the corner and, instead of going to Rosie, pulled out his own mobile to call the police. Let poor Martin, terrified and out of his depth, gibber to the police about how his boss had killed someone, how they needed to come now but be careful because Elias Bouchard could _read minds_ and _see everything_ that happened and was _really dangerous_ … the whole phone call was a perfectly natural reaction to what he’d just seen. And if it happened to let the police know that they were about to get a prisoner that had skills they’d find extremely useful, well. That was just coincidence.

Martin figured that one way to help keep a guy in jail was to make sure that he was much more useful to his captors in there than outside. And ten or so clear videos of him shooting a guy who, for all intents and purposes, looked to just be standing on the other side of the room yelling at him, probably helped. It was hard to cover up that many videos taken by that many random civilians who were all, presumably, already sharing them on the internet, and it’d be a little while before youtube and facebook and soforth took the videos down for violation of their rules (you can’t just show a fucking MURDER).

Martin hung up the call, detoured to the archives to drop the burner phone Sasha had got him that he’d been using to text Mike and Melanie into a locked drawer in his desk to dispose of later, and went to wait for the police.

\----------------------------

  
  


In the flaming wreckage of the wax museum, something stood up.

It was vaguely human-shaped, which felt right, because it was… a man. Yes. That was what it was. But it recalled looking different. It used to have a lot more skin – _he_ used to have a lot more skin, rather than being coated in blood and debris and roiling waves of burning pain.

There was an axe, lying nearby. It didn’t belong to him, it belonged to Martin; but he’d been using it, hacking through wax figures, before the music had made him forget. The wax was liquid now, pooling between stone rubble and burning timber, but it was still cooler, more soothing, than his wounds, so he scooped up handfuls of it and slathered it on the parts of him that were missing skin.

There were sirens, in the distance. Sirens that would bring help. Tim didn’t need help.

That was his name. Tim.

He stumbled forward, and found a face, half-melted. A mask. A something. He’d snarled at it, at Grimaldi, at the thing that had killed his brother, and brought its entire world crashing down, and here it was, dead and gone forever, and all he could feel was…

Grief. He had failed.

This thing had died with the Circus, with the ritual, and that meant it would never know what Tim had taken from it. It hadn’t had to suffer through the pain of losing everything; it hadn’t had to face the knowledge that everything it had ever cared about was gone, burned to ash. Given how quickly things had progressed between him realising what the detonator was and using it, Grimaldi had barely even had a chance to fear the potential of that loss. It hadn’t felt what Tim had felt, what if deserved, and now, because Tim had killed it so quickly, it never would.

He’d screwed up. Years of working toward this revenge, and now, he’d never have it.

Still. Not bad for a first try. He’d learned from his mistake, and next time, he’d do better.

Tim dropped the scrap of plastic back into the ruins where it belonged, and walked out into the night.


	60. Chapter 60

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember when this fic was about Elias putting googly eyes on stuff and people making fun of Sasha's flip phone?

Mary leaned against the back of her cramped, dark space, and waited.

She didn’t know how long she’d been in there. She’d run out of air and stopped breathing some time ago, and now she had nothing else to track time. Was it time for the Unknowing yet? Because if it was past that time, then the Unknowing had either been delayed, or failed. And her friends had locked her in here, meaning they were probably going after the Unknowing, so… were they dead? Had the Circus killed them? Or had they succeeded in stopping it? Both bad outcomes.

They’d tricked her. Betrayed her. Smiled and laughed and joked and used her desire to play along to _lock her in a safe_. Maybe forever.

Mary didn’t know how to feel about that. What was the appropriate reaction to that? The human reaction?

She didn’t know. There was no one to copy, no one to ask. So what was her reaction?

Well… she didn’t have to kill them. And they hadn’t killed her. That must be why they’d done it. And it hurt, to be betrayed like that, but they all knew that there was going to have to be something. They weren’t going to agree on the Unknowing, so…

But if they had locked her in here and stopped the Unknowing, they’d doomed her. Doomed the world to fall to some other power to buy a little bit more of this, and she should be angry about that. Right? But…

Mary couldn’t stop thinking about Melanie, laughing along, about Tim smiling as he put his hand on the door and shut her in the safe. It was obvious what they were doing, right? It seemed obvious, in retrospect. Had Mary truly, genuinely not realised what was happening?

Or had she played along? Had she also thought that this was the best solution?

Humans couldn’t trust their memories. Mary didn’t know if she could trust her memory. She didn’t know if hers would do that thing humans’ did, where they reinterpreted everything that happened to line up better with the identities they’d built for themselves. If so, maybe she’d agreed to this, subconsciously. Or maybe she hadn’t, she’d been tricked. How could she know? How could she know what Mary had decided, for sure?

And now, she was… here. Maybe forever, or maybe not.

Mary leaned against the back of her cramped, dark space, and waited.

\------------------------------

  
  


Elias lay back on his cot and decided that, all in all, things were working out exceptionally well.

He hadn’t exactly planned to go to jail, but he was going to need some excuse to put distance between himself and Jon as Jon’s powers grew, lest he see through Elias’ plot. The jail cell didn’t restrict his abilities at all (he missed being able to do Institute paperwork, but that was a sacrifice he would have sadly had to have made anyway); if anything, it gave him far more time to watch things. Of course he’d rather be at the Institute, where he could act if things went awry, but aside from his wager with Lukas (a danger he himself had invited and couldn’t really complain about), there wasn’t really much that could go wrong in any serious sense, especially not while his Archivist was comatose. Oh, The Library might eventually get restless without an active Archivist and cry for another if Jon took too long, but the universe had run out of Von Closen’s mysterious pseudolineage to plague Elias with when Gerard Keay had succumbed to his cancer, and nobody else but Elias himself was likely to even be able to _find_ The Library. If anything, jail kept Elias safe from that potential fate.

And if it got hungry enough to pull someone else in beyond all of his defenses and balances? Well, it wouldn’t; it had survived inert in Wurttemberg’s tomb for ages. But if it did, hypothetically, then anyone responding to a draw that powerful would be driven insane and killed immediately. There was nothing at the Institute he needed to guard against. Well, except Peter, but again, Elias had invited him.

As for being uncomfortable, well, people who could consistently feed the police valuable information tended to be fairly well protected from the various physical dangers of prison from guard and fellow prisoner alike, and anybody who thought a cold room, an uncomfortable cot, bad food and hours with nothing to do were the height of discomfort hadn’t put themselves through half the things he’d had to go through in his pursuit of power and immortality. He could weather this.

Besides, with so very many eyes to see through, it wasn’t like he was ever going to get _bored._

\--------------------------------

  
  


When Tim woke up, he wasn’t alone.

“He’s a dud, Arthur,” said the familiar voice of Jude Perry. “He’s gonna burn out in like a week.”

“Give him a chance,” said a man’s voice that Tim didn’t know. “We need people, Jude.”

“Not this one, we don’t. There’s not a spot on Desolation in his soul.”

“You saw what I saw! You watched him walk out of the fire!”

Tim opened his eyes. He was lying in an alley, with Jude and the man, presumably Arthur, literally arguing over him, one on each side.

“Oh, so he fluked into about three minutes of divinity, good for him. I admit, those guys taking down the wax museum _was_ hilarious, but it was a one-off. I know this guy, Arthur; I don’t know what his whole deal is but I know a revenge game when I see it. That was personal. He’s got no affinity for scouring in the bigger picture.”

“We all start personal, Jude. Even you. And you didn’t show the raw talent we both saw there.”

Tim though he should say something. “Hey – ”

“Shut up,” Jude snapped at him, before continuing to argue with Arthur as if he wasn’t there. “A flash in the pan doesn’t last long, you know that.”

“It does if you feed it. We all had to learn.”

“It won’t work. He doesn’t have what it takes. You’re going to waste your time and he’s going to burn out, and you’re going to look like even more of an idiot than everyone already thinks you are.”

“Look, Jude, random strays aren’t exactly my first choice either, but our numbers are dwindling and we need to do _something_. Thanks to Agnes’ sacrifice, we’re going to have another shot long before these other conquered powers and when she returns to scour the earth it would be nice if she actually had a congregation to support her. Most of us older ones aren’t going to live that long, so unless you want to be one of three or four people left trying to pull off the Scoured Earth on your own, we have to take new blood where we can get it.”

“Fine.” Jude threw her hands up. “I’ll back your play to the others. For now.”

“Glad you’ve seen things my way.”

“I haven’t. I just think it’ll be hilarious when this one burns out on you.” She walked away.

Arthur crouched down near Tim, apparently deciding to finally acknowledge his presence. “Hi. It’s Tim, right?”

“Who the hell are you and what the fuck is going on?”

“I’m Arthur, and I’m here to help you.” He offered Tim his hand. Tim, not being a complete idiot, didn’t take it.

“Really. Then perhaps you can explain to me why I’m out here, and not in my bed.”

“Ah, yeah. The hotel you were staying in suffered an… accident. We had to get you out.”

“You burned it down.”

“No. You did.”

Tim was not expecting that. “What?”

Arthur sighed. “Get up. I’ve got some friends to introduce you to.”

Tim got up, grumbling, “I already know I’m going to hate them.”

“Don’t worry,” Arthur said. “I’m certain that feeling will be mutual.”

\-----------------------------------

  
  


Martin sat in the hospital chair and looked at the part of Jon’s face he could see around the ventilator. He looked peaceful, but given that he didn’t have enough muscle activity to breathe on his own, that probably didn’t mean anything.

“Hi again, Jon. They say they don’t know if you can hear me, but… well. An update can’t hurt, I guess.

“Elias is… I don’t know when his trial is coming up or, or how any of that works, but he seems tucked away for now. He’s put someone else in charge of the Institute – Peter Lukas, the ghost ship guy from those statements Elias never wanted you to look into? – so I guess he thinks he’s going to be away for awhile, too. Melanie’s not happy about him being alive, but she went along with putting him there and I guess that’s what matters. He can’t hurt y – anyone now, at least.”

Martin glanced around and wondered if Elias was watching them at the moment. He supposed it didn’t matter.

“They still haven’t found Tim’s body. Sasha keeps saying maybe he got out, but he would’ve shown up, or called us, or at least turned up at hospital. He wouldn’t just disappear. There’s so many… many bits of people and mannequins and rubble and…” Martin stopped and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. “Everyone else is safe, though Daisy broke a few bones in the collapse, but… I mean, I guess I knew that this was dangerous? That we were probably going to lose people? And, and really, this is a better outcome than we had any right to expect, but that doesn’t make it any better, you know? I don’t know who’s arranging his, his funeral, or whatever, but I guess he’s technically still a missing person until they find the… the, well. And other than that it’s really just you, so… come back to us soon, alright? We’re trying to get, you know, sort of back into the swing of things and it’s… everything’s different. Basira drops by to use the library but without a head archivist to actually give us tasks she spends most of her time at her other job, and Melanie’s always off chasing up whatever statement she feels like, and we haven’t really got Mary out yet because everyone’s kind of scared she might kill us all? So it’s just Sasha and me, most of the time, and I know it hasn’t even been a week yet but the whole place just feels so… empty. Without you. Not even just the archives, the whole Institute is… that’s what you get having a Lukas in charge, I guess. Come back to us soon, Jon, okay?” He squeezed Jon’s hand – a squeeze that was not returned, obviously – resisted the urge to kiss Jon’s forehead, and turned to leave.

He wasn’t crying.

He wasn’t.


	61. Chapter 61

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this is happening now.

When the light poured in, it took Mary a moment to remember how the eyes worked.

The archives crew were standing around, watching her carefully. Sasha opened the door and backed away quickly. Martin watched from the far corner. Melanie and Basira stood near the door, not even hiding the fact that they were both holding axes. Nobody looked aggressive, though; just very defensive.

Mary stepped shakily out of the safe and reminded herself to start breathing again.

“So it’s over,” she said.

“Yeah,” Melanie said.

“Delayed, or…?”

“We blew it up,” Sasha said. “It’s well and truly over.”

“Well, then.” Just like that, the world was saved. Just like that, the world was over, prey for the first ritual that would succeed before the Strangers got another chance. At least, Mary supposed, they had the same goals now. Stop anyone else from destroying the world for a century or two. “Wait. Where are Tim and Jon?”

Mary wasn’t perfect with facial expressions yet. But the expressions on the faces around her told her everything she needed to know.

She didn’t even decide to cry. As she’d been refining her body, there were built-in reflexes to consider, and the tears were pouring down her face before she’d even known they were coming. Melanie dropped her axe and she and Sasha enveloped Mary in a hug, but she couldn’t stop crying.

Well, that wasn’t true. She could get rid of the tear ducts, curtail the reflex, as easy as she’d stopped breathing. But she didn’t.

Jon had always been a little distant. Things with Tim had been very tense, as the Unknowing had approached. But they were her friends. They’d made her feel welcome, when she’d arrived at the Institute, barely human; Tim had taken them drinking and introduced her to karaoke, Jon had shown her how to do follow-up research. They’d taken time to help her and she’d taken time to help them; whenever someone had needed somebody else to show them something, or tell them to go home and take a damn nap, or lighten the mood with a joke, someone was there. Like everyone else in the room (except maybe Basira, who Mary didn’t really know yet but was looking forward to getting to know), Jon and Tim had helped to build Mary. And Mary had helped to build Jon and Tim.

And now they didn’t exist.

Martin cleared his throat. “Jon’s not… I mean, Jon’s in a coma. At hospital. He’ll wake up.”

Mary heard the uncertainty in her voice. She’d studied human anatomy enough to know what the chances were of someone waking up from a coma, and how quickly those chances dropped off. But she nodded, and wiped her eyes.

“What cases need following up?” she asked.

And they got back to work.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Elias was having a nap when everything went horribly wrong. He sat bolt upright in bed, forced himself not to panic, and double checked. Maybe he was misinterpreting, Maybe it had been a nightmare.

He closed his eyes to Look, and checked everything. It hadn’t been a nightmare.

The guard who happened to be walking past at that moment had never heard such a colourful combination of swear words from such a range of time periods all said in one breath before.

\-------------------------------

  
  


Martin was walking alone down a corridor, lost in his thoughts, when he almost bumped into Peter Lukas.

“Martin!” The man grinned. “Just the man I was hoping to see.”

 _Obviously, or you wouldn’t have been where I could see you,_ Martin thought. He took a cautious step back. “How can I help you, Mr Lukas?”

“I was just wondering if you’d given any further thought to my offer.”

“Yes. I’m… flattered, but I’m really quite happy in the archives. Besides, I’m sure there are plenty of other people in the Institute more qualified than me.”

“On the contrary, Martin! I believe that you have the exact qualifications I’m looking for in an assistant.”

“Yeah, um… when you say ominous things like that it doesn’t make people more eager to work with you,” Martin said, taking another step back.

“Duly noted. Conversation has never been my strong suit, I’m afraid. But money has, so I feel I should remind you that the promotion comes with a quite significant pay rise. I’m sure you could do with a bit of extra money, Martin; your mother – ”

“It’s still a ‘no’, Mr Lukas,” Martin said firmly. “Again, I’m flattered, but I’d really rather stay where I am.”

Peter looked at him carefully. It was a dangerous look; not like Elias’ look, which gave the impression that he was dissecting your entire being and history right then and there, but still with a heavy implied threat. Martin was pretty sure that Peter wasn’t trying to be threatening, he was just looking. But he couldn’t help but think of the piles of statements in the archives that demonstrated exactly how dangerous Peter and his entire family was.

Eventually, Peter nodded. “Well. I still hope you change your mind. Good day, Martin.” He turned and walked around a corner.

When Martin peeked around the corner, he wasn’t at all surprised to see nobody there.

Martin couldn’t understand why Peter wanted him as an assistant. So far as he could tell, his decision was based on a five-minute conversation they’d had over a month ago, when Peter had come in for a meeting with Elias, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d done that would have made him memorable or interesting to Peter. He’d mostly just been… scared of him, and a bit nervous because everyone else was off doing things and he was having trouble trying to keep up or track anyone. Which he didn’t think was an unusual reaction to an office environment, or to Peter Lukas.

Even if a job out of the archives might have looked promising before, it was certainly off the table now. He’d made a commitment to the archives, he’d decided that they were in their predicament together, and he wasn’t going to walk out on them at such a rough time. If Mary could just… decide that her coworkers were her friends, then so could he. He could make sure that their network remained strong and that they could get each other through this, so when Jon returned, he’d be walking back into a smoothly running environment and he’d be able to get back into the flow of things easily.

Anyway, they had apocalypses to track. Martin had set up a concept map in Jon’s office for the moment, on one of those movable pin-up boards positioned so that the map wouldn’t be visible to any members of the public who came in. He’d probably have to move it when Jon needed the space again, but for now, it worked, and without the Unknowing or Elias to worry about, everything fit easily.

At the door to the archives, he ran into a woman he vaguely remembered from… right, he’d seen her at the hospital, also visiting Jon. Some kind of past relationship with Jon, now close to Melanie. “Georgie. Hi.”

“Hi. It’s Martin, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Are you here for Melanie?”

“No. I um, I was looking for you, actually. I just went to see Jon at the hospital, and… I thought you should be told, in person.”

“Told what?” Martin asked, but the expression on Melanie’s face answered the question for him. “No,” he said.

“Martin, I’m so sorr – ”

“No. You’re wrong.” Martin laughed a little, hysterically. “He wouldn’t… not after… they just made a mistake. They thought he was dead when they found him, remember? And they were wrong.”

“They did every scan they could think of. There’s nothing.”

“No. He wouldn’t just… he wouldn’t survive the explosion, only to die now!”

“The chances of waking up from a coma are – ”

“I don’t care! I have to… I have to go.”

Martin practically ran out of the Institute. The fastest route to the hospital was easy to find; it was a simple matter of observing the traffic and predicting the bus delays so that he would know which bus would drop him off just as another arrived to pick him up. He found the right doctor in the right mood and said the right words to be taken down to the morgue without anybody trying to stop him, and the mortician opened up the right locker and there was Jon.

And he looked dead, yes. But that didn’t mean anything. He’d looked dead on the respirator, too, lying there unmoving no matter how Martin begged. He didn’t look any different now, except for the lack of attached machines, so how could they be sure, hmm? He was the Archivist, he wasn’t supposed to just _die_. They should’ve done more scans.

Martin reached out to take his hand, and he knew.

He would always be connected to Jon, always. But there was nothing tying him to this cold piece of meat lying on the mortician’s slab. Because nobody was inside it.

Jon was gone. And he was never coming back.


	62. Chapter 62

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team bonding!

Peter Lukas had given the whole archive staff a full two weeks off work, saying they needed “a little distance”, and reminded them that they qualified for Institute-reimbursed therapy. All Martin could think of was the funeral looming a few days away. He didn’t even know who was organising it. Jon had been his… Jon, and Martin didn’t even know him well enough to know who was organising his funeral.

He couldn’t get over that. He sat in his cold and empty flat, silence broken only by the ticking of the clock, and turned the little invitation over and over in his hands, trying to puzzle out who had sent it, who Jon had had in his life who would be responsible for that kind of thing.

If Martin died suddenly, who would arrange his funeral? His mother couldn’t do it. His father… hell, he didn’t even remember his father’s _name_. Even his surname had been his mother’s. If he died, there would be no one to get a coffin, to arrange a viewing, to send out tasteful little cards with a date and an old photo on them.

There was something wrong with the tik of the clock. No; it was the door. Someone was knocking on the door. If he ignored them, they’d surely leave soon.

His phone buzzed. He turned it off. Jon had mentioned, once, being raised by his grandmother, but he’d also said his grandmother was dead. So he probably had no parents or grandparents, unless he’d been removed from his parents for some other reason, in which case they might still arrange a funeral. But Martin didn’t think so. He knew Jon didn’t have any siblings. Cousins?

The knocking had stopped, but some other noise was happening at his front door. He waited patiently for the person to go away.

The organiser had known who to invite. Unless they’d just gone to the Institute and invited all of Jon’s coworkers? That made sense, since Jon didn’t seem to have many friends outside the Institute. Or maybe he did; maybe he had a very active social life, and Martin just hadn’t been close enough to him to realise. Maybe the funeral would be full of dear, close friends from Jon’s normal life outside of work, the kind of life that people who weren’t Martin had.

Martin’s front door opened. He glanced up, annoyed, just in time to see Sasha pocket her lockpicks. Melanie marched in after her, strode over and grabbed Martin’s arm.

“This is bullshit,” she said. “We’re going out. Basira and Mary are already waiting for us.”

He tried to shake her off, but she wouldn’t let go. “I don’t feel like it.”

“ _Of course_ you don’t fucking feel like it. Nobody does. We lost two people within one week fighting the clown apocalypse. But you’ve been sitting in here for three days not answering your phone and three days is quite long enough, I think, so we. Are. Going. Out. We’re going to go buy a bunch of vodka for me, and stupidly fancy coffee for Sasha and Basira, and whatever bullshit fancy tea you and Mary are into these days, and we’re going to sit down and be miserable together because frankly I am getting tired of this bullshit. Georgie is pissed at me for annoying her with how pissed I am at you and I’m not letting you fuck up my relationship, so get a damn coat.”

“I don’t see how I’m responsible for your relationship,” Martin grumbled, but it was obvious that his opinion didn’t matter here as Sasha dumped a coat into his arms and Melanie physically pulled him towards the door. “Can I at least go put some nicer clothes on? I’m not going out in sweatpants.”

“You should’ve thought of that before we broke in,” Sasha said cheerfully as he was pulled out the door, barely given time to grab his wallet and keys. “We’re having a sleepover at Mary’s; I’m sure she’ll have something you can borrow.”

“Mary didn’t own _plates_ until I intervened so I really doubt that. What do you mean, a sleepover? I didn’t agree to a sleepover.”

“Luckily you didn’t agree to anything, so I guess it’s moot.”

Martin had to admit, there wasn’t a good way to fight that logic.

\-----------------------------

  
  


“Hello, Elias!”

Elias didn’t bother sitting up. He didn’t even bother opening his eyes. “Peter.”

“How are you doing in here?”

“Marvellously, thanks for asking. I assume you came by to discuss something other than my health?”

“Ah, yes. About your Archivist. So sorry to hear what happened. Very unfortunate.”

Elias took a deep breath and unclenched his jaw. “It was always a risk.”

“Of course. It does raise the question, though, about our little wager. Where does this new development leave us, exactly?”

“What do you mean? I don’t see how one thing affects the other. There will be an Archivist, and they will, at some point, need to be marked by the Lonely. Feel free to make your seletion and proceed with your scheme. I’m sure I’ll have need of your services by the time you fail.”

“Hmm. In fact, I might hold off on making my selection until after you’ve made yours, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Yes, that’s probably wise.”

There was no reply, which probably meant that Peter was gone. Elias didn’t bother to check. He had far more important things to do; namely, select a new Archivist.

He’d been so sure with Jon, too. Well, there were always risks. It wasn’t unrecoverable.

Somebody already in the archives was probably the best bet. Melanie was out, of course; she was curious enough, but she’d tried to kill him multiple times and he didn’t think that tying her more tightly to the Institute and giving her a lot of extra power was a good move in terms of self preservation. Sasha was out for the same reason as last time; she was too damn smart, and there was a chance she’d see through his attempts to mark her. He had no hope of convincing Tim, who seemed a little busy with his Desolation dalliance anyway, so unless he wanted to look for an outsider, it was down to Martin or Basira. And he’d better make his choice quickly and get everyone’s signatures on fresh employment forms; every day without an Archivist was another day they might realise they were free of the Institute, and Elias preferred to keep people with grudges against him under his control.

So. Back to the task of investigating his options.

He wouldn’t fail a second time.

\--------------------------------

  
  


“You know, I’ve been lookig at you for ten minutes, but every time I look away I still can’t remember what your face looks like,” Basira said, frowning at Mary. “But it does look different now than before. I’m just not sure how.”

“It’s the same for any part of me,” Mary said. “You only notice with the face because you expect to tell face apart, because that’s how human brains work.”

“But you can look like different people… put on different masks?”

“Oh, yes. I can look very different and still be Mary, if you want, but I’m not ready to not be Mary yet.”

“Right. Right. Of course. So can you look like things that aren’t people?”

“No. Well, yes. It’s complicated.”

“How?”

“I can’t… I mean, I imitate humans. So I mostly look like humans. But I can do nonhuman things if it’s human. Like this.” Bones cracked, and Mary’s arm was suddenly twice as long. “Having a sleepover and talking about our bodies and talents is a human thing that humans do, so I can demonstrate this for you. When I was underground looking for Jon, it was a very human thing to use what abolities I had to try to save my friend’s life, so I could put on more useful nonhuman features then. And when I didn’t know how humans worked, my insides were hooked up in all kinds of strange ways that I can’t bring myself to do now that I know better.”

“So it’s about intent. Your abilities aren’t confined by physical rules, but by intent.”

“Physical rules too. I have mass. But also intent. Being human is important, and fear is important.”

“Fear?”

“Yeah. That arm trick I just did, made you scared of me for a moment. That’s why it was so easy.”

“Fascinating.” Daisy would _love_ to hear this. Should Basira be taking notes?

Just then, the front door opened. Sasha and Melanie entered, trailing a reluctant Martin. Mary actually squealed in delight and clapped her hands together. “We’re all here! Now we can order the pizza.”

“And we brought vodka and fancy coffee,” Melanie said. “Ever been drunk, Mary?”

“Oh, don’t you guys dare all get wasted and leave me the only sober person in the room,” Basira groaned. “I’m not sitting through that.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be drinking,” Martin said.

“Me neither,” Sasha said. “If I get drunk tonight I’ll go too far and I do not want a hangover tomorrow.”

“None of you are any fun,” Melanie declared.

“We’ll have fun,” Mary said, “because that’s what sleepovers are for. I bought sleeping bags. Everyone wait here.” She headed out of the lounge room to get them. Martin, eyeing the stock photos still creepily hung on the walls, sidled up to Basira.

“What, exactly, are we doing here?” he asked.

“Either grieving our dead coworkers or indulging a horror monster’s desire for adolescent life experiences, I think? Maybe both. I’m just going with it.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “At this stage that’s probably for the best.”

\-------------------------

  
  


Elias sat up so quickly that he actually fell out of bed. He cracked his elbow and nose on the hard prison floor and just lay there for a bit, reviewing what he’d learned about Martin Blackwood, checking and rechecking. It all fit into place. And he hadn’t even noticed.

Blackwood. BLACK. WOOD. Right there under his very nose, completely unnoticed because he’d made stupid, lazy assumptions, long before he could ever have known they might be important.

But _Martin_? Really?

Well. At least now, he knew the path forward.

No more mistakes.


	63. Chapter 63

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin gets drunk. Elias makes a proposal.

“I’m just saying,” Melanie said, sitting cross-legged on one of the absurdly squishy bright blue sleeping bags that Mary had provided and sipping her vodka-and-vodka-and-coke, “we could make a killing making a haunted house for halloween. We’d be legendary.”

“I’m interested!” Mary said brightly, looking up from the houseplants she was carefully watering on the windowsill.

“Don’t encourage the monster,” Basira chided.

“Why not? Girl’s gotta eat,” Melanie said.

“ _Do_ you eat fear?” Basira asked.

“I don’t know. Why does everyone think I know these things?”

“Well, you’re the monster. If anyone knew it’d be you, right?”

“You’re a human. Were you born knowing how your liver works?”

“I still don’t know how my liver works,” Melanie said.

“It works less well,” Martin said, “when you pour that much alcohol into it.”

“Hey, you’re on your third vodka-and-vodka-and-coke, Mr Hypocrite.”

“Mine is just a vodka and coke,” Martin said primly. “Because I’m not insane.”

“Coward.”

“At least I’m not ridiculously drunk.”

“Oh, you are,” Basira said. “You both are.”

“I’ll put some coffee on for both of you,” Sasha said, getting up.

“So they can be drunk and hyper?”

“Yeah. Best combination.”

“They should both drink water,” Mary said. “It will reduce the severity of the headaches tomorrow.”

“Mary. Mary.” Martin got up, put an arm on her elbow, and said with worrying intensity, “Your potted plants. _Are very cute_.”

“Thank you! They wilted a bit when I was in the safe, but they survived, and I’m bringing them back up to full health now.”

“This is a weird conversation,” Basira said. “You’re all weird.”

“You started working with us because a dream told you to find our kidnapped boss,” Sasha pointed out.

“Hey, a private investigator takes jobs where she can find them! It’s a tough market.”

“How’s that going?” Martin asked. “The private investigating thing?”

“It’s alright. Lost pets and cheating spouses, mostly. All my interesting gigs have been about you guys. I’m trying to convince Daisy to quit the force and go in as my partner in the firm; I don’t think the force is… good for her, you know?”

“She seems pretty good at her job to me,” Melanie said.

“She’s brave and skilled and can go after criminals like no one’s business, but some of her decisions… well… they’re using her to do dirty work that she shouldn’t have to do, and she’s started…”

“Noticing a potential terror plot and tackling it herself with the help of you, a non-cop, and not even telling the police about it?” Martin suggested.

“Yeah! Stuff like that. I don’t think it’s gonna end well for her.” Basira sipped her coffee. “Sorry,l you guys don’t want to hear about this.”

“Oh, we absolutely do,” Martin assured her.

“We do?” Sasha asked, puzzled.

“Yes. It’s very important.”

“She did save the world,” Melanie pointed out. “Setting the explosives and all.”

“Not just that,” Martin said. “It’s… okay, Basira was hired as a hostage and I don’t know why Elias put Mary here, but for the rest of us, you guys notice what we all have in common?”

“What?”

“Very few outside ties. Elias hired people who didn’t have anything outside the Institute. He hired me right after I put Mum in a home; I’m pretty sure Jon’s an orphan and he isn’t… wasn’t… very social; Melanie’s Ghost Hunt UK team was just about collapsed and her credibility in the toilet – ”

“Thank you so much.”

“ – Tim always seemed social, but his relationships outside the Institute were all really… what’s the word…”

“Transient?” Sasha suggested.

“Yeah. And your secret underground network of criminal hackers was probably buried too deep for even Elias to know about them so you looked alone, too.”

“I have a couple of old friends who know about phones, I’m not part of a secret underground network of criminal hackers,” Sasha said, rolling her eyes.

“I know you have to say that because if we knew the truth you’d have to kill us, and I respect that. Point is.” Martin paused to drink more alcohol. “We’re in this together, and we have to have each others’ backs, and that’s fine. But I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be totally cut of from anyone else. That’s what Elias wants, and we shouldn’t be trusting Elias. Basira, you don’t have to compartmentalise your life. Daisy’s important to you so you should talk about her. And you.” He pointed at Melanie. “You’re dating that girl Georgie, right? How’s that going?”

Melanie coloured. “How can you possibly know that? Have you been spying on me?”

“Uh, no? I saw her and I’ve seen you and it’s kind of obvious?”

“What about it is remotely obvious? Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s really not any of your business.”

“Fine. If you don’t want to talk about things, you shouldn’t talk about them.” He fixed Melanie with a worryingly intense stare. “But if you do want to talk about them, you have to talk about them. Okay? Networks are important.”

“How drunk are you?”

“I’ll get some water,” Mary said cheerfully, heading to the kitchen.

“New rule,” Basira proposed, “we don’t give Martin this much alcohol any more.”

“Or we give Martin alcohol all the time,” Sasha suggested. “This is hilarious.”

And that was why Martin was battling a terrible headache at 11am the next morning, when the prison called him to tell him that Mr Elias Bouchard wanted a meeting.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Elias had worked in academia long enough to know the look of a man running entirely on painkillers and rage. As Martin grumpily stormed into the room, Elias gave him a proper Look over for the first time since hiring him and saw… just a man.

Admittedly a fairly traumatised one, with a couple of affects that had slipped under Elias’ radar. He had some kind of Spider-related infection eating its way up his arm, which explained rather a lot in retrospect, and Elias wasn’t sure where he’d picked up the starry-eyed look; probably ticked off Michael Crew during their scheming. But there was nothing about him that he wouldn’t expect from a man in Martin’s line of work, especially one so prone to throwing themselves into danger to protect or look after others.

But he’d never seen anything in the Keays or Von Closens either, no matter how hard he looked. That meant nothing.

“Martin,” he greeted him, with a friendly smile. “You’re looking well.”

“What do you want?”

“To offer my condolences. Jon was – ”

“Don’t.”

“Right. To business, then.” Elias clasped his hands, ignoring the weight of the cuffs, and leaned forward. “The Institute is, unfortunately, currently lacking a head archivist.”

Martin laughed disbelievingly. “You dragged me down here to talk administration? Isn’t this something you should be discussing with Peter?”

“I want to offer you the job.”

Martin stared. “What?”

“A promotion. To head archivist. There’s a pay increase, and I’m sure you’re already familiar with the metaphysical – ”

“Why does everyone keep trying to promote me? Why me? There’s no way I’m your first choice for this.”

“You are, in fact, my first choice for this. Of all the possible candidates, I believe that you are most likely to survive the position.”

Martin snorted. “Oh yeah, that makes a job sound fantastic. ‘You should take it because you’re more likely to survive’. You know, Elias, you could at least try to make your lies sound believable. No way you look at me and think ‘oh yeah, that guy’s tough, he’s got a good survival instinct’. Sasha – ”

“Sasha would throw herself into the role head first and burn herself out completely within six months, much as Jon would have if I hadn’t been there to protect him from himself, and you know it. But believe what you like, Martin. The fact is that I am offering you the job. If you’re that curious, then perhaps someday you’ll have enough power to make me tell you why. Won’t that be a fun goal to strive for?”

“You’re trying to convince me. Which means you can’t _make_ me.”

“That’s true. Accepting this role has to be your choice.”

“What makes you think I’d ever even consider doing that? After everything, after seeing what it did to Jon?”

“Come on, Martin. You already know why you’re going to accept. Let’s not play games.”

“I don’t, uh, I _don’t_ see any reason to accept, actually.”

Elias rubbed his temples. “Is that what you need, then? Me to be the bad guy? To explain things to you so that you can pretend you didn’t already run the numbers yourself, didn’t already see where this would go? Fine, if you _really_ want me to hold you hand, I can do that for you.” He looked Martin in the eye.

“There _will be_ an Archivist,” Elias said. “That is something that neither you nor I can control. What I do have some limited control over is who it is, and I’m offering it to you. You will accept, because if you don’t, I have to offer it to someone else. Perhaps, as you say, the best available choice – Sasha James. And then you’ll watch her take on the burden of this power, and burn out, and die, performing a duty that you should were too timid to save her from.”

“Sasha’s not an idiot. She’ll just refuse, too.”

“Perhaps she will. Perhaps Sasha and Melanie and Basira will all refuse, and I’m sure you can see what I’d have to do then.”

“You’d offer it to some poor outsider who has no idea what they’re getting into. Like Jon.”

“Don’t look at me like that – as I said, there will be an Archivist and I can’t stop that. If you force me to rope in another person, that’s on you. But yes. You’d have another unknown element on your hands, someone you’d have to adapt to the situation rather quickly while you track down the remaining rituals, a delay that could very well endanger the world. I should also point out that not everyone has the right… personality… to work well in the archives. I vetted all of you for that before hiring or transferring you, but, thanks in no small part to your actions, I’m not really in a position to vet new additions quite so thoroughly. I cannot guarantee that any outsider I choose would find the role quite so tolerable or survivable as any of you. So. Should I have Peter prepare the employment contract?”

“I need to talk this over with the others,” Martin said quietly.

“Ah. Yes; that’s probably very sensible! I knew you were the right choice!”

Martin looked at him in surprise. “What?”

“Assistant loyalty is a very important resource for an Archivist. You and I already know what the only logical choice is, but they could be upset if you seem to be going behind their backs, so by making them believe they had some input – ”

“That’s not what this is,” Martin snapped.

“If you say so. Good day, Martin.” Elias stood up and signalled the guard.

There. He’d handled that well.

Everything was going according to plan.


	64. Chapter 64

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group decide what to do.

The man’s legs were too badly burned to run properly, but he did his best, making for the safety of the alley. His pursuer followed at a walking pace, so maybe if he ran fast enough, it he hid cleverly enough…

“Where are you even running to, Harold?” the man called behind him. “You’ve got no home left to go to. And _she’s_ not going to take you in, not after everything. What are you planning to do, shelter in a dumpster and crawl to work tomorrow begging them to take you back? It’s over. You have _nothing_.”

There; some garbage in the corner of the alley. The man scrambled under it and froze.

Tim stood in the mouth of the alley and shook his head, disappointed. “Come _on_ , man. Haven’t we been through this? You chose the most flammable possible hiding place.”

The screams died down shortly before the flames did. Tim brushed some ash off his trousers and grimaced.

“A pretty good takedown,” Arthur’s voice said from behind him. “For a beginner.”

“Arthur. Short time, no see. So you’re still babysitting me, then?”

“Just seeing if you needed help with the cleanup. We do look after our own.”

“How kind. But I think I have this one handled.”

“Yes. A slow bleed over a few days, leaving behind a grieving mother and daughter. Very creative.”

“I do try.”

“Of course, you had plenty of time to observe him in planning this. I don’t think the daughter will be grieving all that hard.”

“So that’s what you’re here about? To tell me to leave evil fucking rapists alone when picking victims?”

“I’m just… concerned that your motivations may be corrupt.”

“You’re the only person in the world who would call saving a girl from her pervert rapist father ‘corrupt’.”

“You know what I meant.”

“You meant that you’re now thinking Jude was right about me.”

“No. If you didn’t feel the call of the Desolation in your soul, you wouldn’t still be here. You would’ve walked away. But I am concerned that if you don’t adapt quickly and commit properly, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Which would be _super_ embarrassing for you.”

“To be perfectly honest, yes, it would.”

“Perhaps that’s the plan, then,” Tim said, stepping into Arthur’s personal space. “To feed the Desolation by bringing down what little respect you still have in the – ”

Arthur punched him in the stomach.

Tim, taken by surprise, dropped to his knees. He curled his hands into fists, but he didn’t hit back – Arthur was made of burning wax and Tim, after the wax and ash of the Unknowing had flaked off, was still made of miraculously healed but very human flesh. He wasn’t an idiot.

“Don’t be like that,” Arthur snapped. “I kept this congregation together for longer than you’ve been alive, and you are not the first bratty little upstart to test me. If you’re really that keep on making a nuisance of yourself, at least channel it towards – are you listening to me?”

Tim wasn’t. He was listening to something else.

“She’s here,” he breathed.

“Who?”

“That fucking murdercop! We have to get out of here!” And he was up and running, Arthur on his heels.

So when Daisy walked past the alley on her crutches and the smell of burning caught her attention, all she found was the badly charred corpse of the victim, trapped under still smouldering garbage.

\------------------------------------

  
  


It had only been a couple of days and they were, once again, at Mary’s house. It made sense as a meeting point when Martin called them all, saying they had to talk; it was bigger than anyone else’s place, and they all knew where it was.

The same was true, of course, for the archives, but nobody suggested meeting there.

Sasha was the last to arrive, and Martin, nervous in a different way to how he was usually nervous, made them all tea and refused to let anyone help. Once they were all seated at Mary’s table, cradling various teas and herbal infusions, he cleared his throat. “I went to see Elias in jail yesterday.”

“Why?” Melanie asked.

“Because he asked me to?”

“What did he want?” Sasha asked.

“To talk about the archives. He’s appointing a new head archivist.”

“Huh. I suppose he eventually – ”

“He offered me the job.”

Everyone was silent. Sasha couldn’t help but note, wryly, that this was the second time she’d been passed over for that job for someone unqualified; the only man still on the team, she couldn’t help noticing. And Martin was even less qualified than Jon.

If she’d still thought this was about running an archive, she’d probably be pretty pissed about that.

“You didn’t take it,” Melanie said.

“Of course not.”

“So you turned him down.” Basira.

“I haven’t given him an answer yet. I wanted to talk it over as a group first. This affects all of us, so…”

“So the answer’s obvious,” Melanie said. “Don’t be the fucking Archivist.”

“Why you?” Basira asked.

“I asked him that. He says he thinks I have the temperament most likely to survive.”

“Ominous,” Sasha noted.

“That’s what I said! I think he’s lying, though. I think he thinks I’ll be the easiest for him to manipulate.”

“Didn’t you put him in jail?”

“That was a group effort.”

“And technically probably saved his life,” Melanie added. “He’s gonna be so much harder for me to kill with all those police in the way. Joking! Jesus Christ.”

That’s kind of my point,” Martin said. “Everyone else at this table is either super smart, really mysterious, literally inhuman, or has tried to kill him on more than one occasion. Of the lot, if you wanted to keep control of the person you were giving superpowers to…”

“Okay,” Basira said, “but doesn’t that also mean you should refuse? We can agree that being manipulated by Elias is bad, right?”

“I don’t think it’s relevant,” Mary said. “Martin said this should be a group decision, right? As a group, we’re a lot harder to manipulate, and if we keep making group decisions, it doesn’t matter who the Archivist is, for manipulation purposes.”

“What happens if you say no?” Sasha asked.

“He said he’d offer it to one of you. If no one takes it, he’ll have to bring in an outsider.”

“Fuck that,” Melanie said.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll do it,” Sasha said, surprising even herself. “It’s not something you should have to do, Martin.”

“It’s not something you should have to do either, Sasha.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to, and I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself to protect us.”

“But you can sacrifice yourself to protect us?”

“That’s different!”

“How?”

“I didn’t just lose Jon!”

Martin crossed his arms. “We both just lost Jon. And Tim.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yeah. I do. You meant that Martin just lost the man he’s been pathetically crushing on for years and now he can’t be trusted to make his own decisions.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Sasha said, like a liar.

“Oh, isn’t it? Isn’t that exactly what you – ”

“Martin’s right,” Basira cut in. “Sasha shouldn’t do it.”

The pair stared at her until she continued.

“I’m sure there was a lot of weird spook stuff that Jon didn’t tell us about; nothing we can do to decide who’s the best for that. But we do know that people kept targeting him. He got kidnapped multiple times. So if we’re picking someone for this, and we’re making decisions as a group, then we should avoid picking people who are the best for actually rescuing our Archivist, if it comes down to it. Sasha’s the hacker and I’ve got investigative experience; we should be in reserve for any rescue missions. I don’t think it’s possible to pick Mary, so it’s between Martin and Melanie.”

“No fucking way am I doing it,” Melanie said.

“Guess that’s it then. Unless anyone’s got a better idea?”

Sasha clenched her fists. “I don’t like this,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”

“None of us should have to do any of this,” Martin said with a grim smile. “But here we are.”

“We should vote!” Mary said. “Who wants Martin to be the Archivist?”

Five hands were raised, some more reluctantly than others.

“You should move back in with me,” Mary said.

“What?”

“If you might be kidnapped, you shouldn’t live alone. I’m really hard to kill. I think? I don’t know for sure, I’ve never been killed, but I have a spare room and I can stop you being kidnapped. And I promise not to watch you sleep this time.”

“Oh. Well, uh. If you don’t mind.”

“It’ll be fun! Like a sleepover every night! And you can teach me to cook more things.”

“That sounds… great. Thanks.” Martin’s phone buzzed. He gave it a glance. “Oh. That was quick.”

“Who is it?”

“Peter Lukas. He wants us all to drop in and sign new employment contracts.”

\---------------------------------------

  
  


Peter was not a manipulative person.

He made this admission to himself not out of any sort of moral conviction, but as an acknowledgement of his limitations. He had no desire or intention of learning enough about people to be able to accurately predict or control them, and had managed through life just fine without having to, for the most part.

Except, of course, when he decided to do something utterly foolish, like make a high-stakes wager with a two hundred year old nigh-omniscient bastard that relied specifically on him manipulating someone.

Peter looked over his options as they put pen to new contracts, considering. Martin was off the table now, a choice that he was sure Elias had made just to get in his way, but the joke was on Elias; while Martin had been Peter’s first choice based on their initial interaction, he’d formed some rather… sticky… social bonds with his coworkers since then, or at least decided to try to, which was just as much of a problem from Peter’s perspective. Nevertheless, when the others asked why they were signing new contracts when their jobs technically hadn’t changed, only Martin’s had, Peter briefly considered letting slip the truth, letting them realise they were free before they trapped themselves again, just to inconvenience Elias. He didn’t, of course; petty games like that would only delay things for them both. But the look on Elias’ face might almost have been worth it.

He watched them leave the building, dipping down to the archives to grab some reading material on the way out, and considered his options. They were sticking together for now, an understandable response to losing two of their number, but Peter had worked under worse conditions. He just needed to identify the weakest, sickest gazelle, cut them off from the herd, and… get to work.

He went back to his office and pulled up their employee files. He had some research to do.


	65. Chapter 65

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for some grief and exposition.

Jon’s funeral was… perfunctory.

Georgie recognised a couple of people from college, and assumed (knowing Jon) that basically everyone else was from his place of work. Aside from those from the archives, most people had the look of those attending an event they were supposed to be at, rather than those genuinely sad for someone close to them. The archives crew looked genuinely grief-stricken, so even the _fucking monster_ was faking sadness better than half the front row, a hollow look in her eyes as she stared vacantly at the man spewing a bunch of bullshit about what a lovely person Jon had been, how he was a treasure to this world, yada yada.

Jon hadn’t been a lovely man, he’d been an emotionally constipated dipshit who got incredibly insecure about everything he did and projected that insecurity on the nearest soft target. He’d also once punched a guy for calling Georgie a slut, broke his hand, and insisted it was fine and spent an afternoon coming up with more and more ridiculous reasons he didn’t feel like using that hand right now until Georgie had physically dragged him into a doctor’s office. He’d been a guy who would spend an hour and a half discussing different kinds of trains with her nine-year-old cousin and later insist he didn’t like children and that didn’t count. He’d certainly never ‘brightened every room he walked into’ or ‘always had a kind word and a smile’. He had once learned how to darn socks, and refused to throw any socks out for over a year, until she ran the numbers, compared them to the price of new socks, and pointed out he was saving himself about fifteen cents per hour of labour. The darning tools went away after that; Jon had always bowed to mathematics.

Did the guy talking up there even _know_ Jon?

Melanie must have felt the same, because she was gripping Georgie’s wrist hard enough to grind the bones together, teeth gritted hard. Georgie tried to pry her fingers open for a minute or so before giving up. She’d deal with it when her hand went purple.

Melanie did eventually let go, but not until it was time to head off for the wake. She stood nervously to one side and admitted, “I don’t want to go.”

“To the wake?”

“Yeah.”

Georgie nodded. “Let’s go get drunk then. We’ll get super drunk and bitch about the two brave dickhead heroes who dies saving the world. You’ll have to do most of the Tim bitching though; I only met him like once.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Fantastic.”

\----------------------------------

  
  


Daisy and Basira watched people filing off to the wake.

“We should get going,” Daisy said.

Basira shook her head. “I don’t feel right about it. Going to the wake, I mean. I don’t… the parts of Jon I knew, none of those people knew. We’re not mourning the same person.”

“We don’t have to go.”

“We can’t just not go.”

“Sure we can. It’s easy. We just turn around and head that way instead. Go for a walk in the park or something. You can mourn just as well there, and we don’t have to be polite to random suits who work for a monster.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”

\---------------------------

  
  


Sasha wasn’t really a crier. Martin, she quickly noticed, was. Mary kept glancing worriedly between them, as if trying to best decide how to express a feeling of grief that must be frighteningly new to her. Sasha didn’t think that either Martin or Mary wanted to walk around making small talk with various Institute people in their current conditions, so after the funeral she suggested, “Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t,” Martin said hollowly. “There’s the wake next.”

“We’ll skip it.”

“We can’t skip it. It’s a wake. You have to go to a wake.”

“Why?”

“That’s just what you do.”

“Why, ‘cause it’s tradition? I vote we start a new funeral tradition, for the archives. Movie night.”

Martin looked at her in confusion. “What?”

“We get drunk, watch all of Tim’s favourite movies, and figure out what parts Jon would loudly pull apart in that pretentious voice of his.”

There, on Martin’s face, a ghost of a smile.

“Sasha, we can’t just – ”

“Too late!” Sasha grabbed his arm. “You’re the Archivist now, it’s time for your first kidnapping! Mary, help me kidnap the Archivist! We need him for our nefarious plot of watching terrible movies!”

“You can’t use movie night to end the world,” Martin pointed out as he let them pull him away.

“Once you’ve seen the kind of garbage Tim liked, you’ll wish we could, though!”

So they didn’t go to the wake.

\----------------------------------

  
  


Once upon a time, a man named Albrecht von Closen had found a tomb deep in the Schwartzwald Forest. He’d written a letter about it to his friend, Jonah Magnus, describing the unfortunately ruined state of the books and the spectre that had haunted him at the tomb.

Jonah had seen through the obvious lies in the letter. Presumably, he’d lied about the books because he’d believed Jonah would steal them – something Jonah couldn’t be too offended by, since he’d done exactly that many years later, after they’d poisoned Von Closen’s mind to the point where the Revelation was eating him from the inside out and sprouting as one of those damn apple trees in his yard – and as for the rest, well. When Albrecht and Carla had found themselves finally, after decades of trying, blessed with two sons, everyone politely ignored the way that their birthdates didn’t entirely make sense. It wasn’t unusual, among their class, for such ‘miscalculations’ to happen, usually involving an unmarried relative finding themselves needing a sudden nine month holiday immediately preceding the miracle of such children, and if Albrecht and Carla had decided to help somebody else and gain themselves a family in the process then it was really nobody else’s business. Jonah wouldn’t conect the Von Closen boys to The Library until he wasn’t jonah any more and they were long dead.

Because the elder son had had children, and those children _kept showing up_.

Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it meant nothing that Von Closens, and later Keays, kept getting jobs at the Institute, or marrying people at the Institute, or working peripherally to but not technically employed by the Institute. Certainly, he’d Looked at enough of them nice and hard and they’d all seemed perfectly normal and completely unaware of The Library or anything else that anyone else in their position wouldn’t be aware of. But they kept being around, and even the ones who didn’t work anywhere near him had a strange talent for finding, using and destroying the stray books. They seemed to track them down with unusual regularity, and suffered the worst effects of them far less than one would expect, almost like they had some kind of instinct for how dangerous each book was. Gerard Keay had destroyed over twenty Leitners in his day, most of them with fire, and not once had he put a match to one of the many, many books that would set you alight instead if you tried it.

The obvious conclusion was that Von Closen’s line had some kind of connection to The Library, like his connection to the Panopticon, but he’d never been able to See it, and if it factored into the way they seemed to gravitate to the Institute, none of them had seemed remotely aware of it. Once he’d become aware of the possible situation, he’d given their blessedly linear family tree a cursory examination to be sure who to look out for, and simply monitored the situation until they finally died out.

He’d never took it too seriously, because the concept was sort of ridiculous. Sure, Albrecht had been drawn to the tomb containing The Library, starving and desperate for an Archivist, been judged by an apparition that was quite probably the last remaining remnants of the previous Archivist (although it was hard to be certain), and gone home with The Library and two boys who seemed mysteriously linked to it, but… well, the obvious conclusion that The Library had become desperate for its missing third piece and had created itself a lineage of Archivists, only to be derailed by Jonah’s theft… that was a little fanciful, even for someone who’d seen so many strange things over the centuries. The library wasn’t sapient, it didn’t plan. Sure, some conscious holdover of the previous Archivist had probably been present, if he was interpreting Albrecht’s ghostly encounter correctly, but… still. It wasn’t something he’d ever really wanted to think about, and it wasn’t something he’d ever needed to take seriously, since none of them had shown awareness of or interest in his Library.

But maybe he should’ve taken things more seriously. Maybe he should have taken a more thorough look at the Von Closen family tree, and realised that just because the elder son was the only one to produce more Von Closens, didn’t mean that the younger didn’t have children. It might mean, for example, that he’d grown up, decided that as a foundling his claim of the Von Closen name was dishonest, and after his parents had passed decided to change it, in the old foundling tradition, to something related to the place he’d been found – a tomb deep in the Schwartzwald Forest. And that his descendants, when they immigrated to England in a time of a lot of anti-German sentiment, might decide to translate their surname into English.

Elias wondered vaguely if Martin, when his powers of understanding any language developed, might someday happen upon the word Schwartzwald in a statement, and chuckle a little at the coincidence, and move on.

Well. It was poetic, he supposed, that the last Archivist to grace this world would be one chosen two hundred years ago by The Library.

After everything that it had done for him, he probably owed it that much.


	66. Chapter 66

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim deserves love. Or murder charges.

Basira made sure that Georgie was home alone before knocking on her door. It could’ve been awkward if Melanie was around.

Georgie answered the door with a cat in her arms and blinked at Basira. “Hey.”

“This is for you.” Basira handed her a thumb drive. “Details of Mary Sue’s movements, known history, basic biology – such as it is – and anything else I could determine about her. There’s a lot detailing her general motivations and outlook on there, as well as some guessed I’ve made about her personality and nature, and recordings of several discussions with me while we talk about things you might find relevant. They’re a little meandering, since she doesn’t know she’s being recorded, but hopefully they contain the kind of information you’re looking for. I’ll send my invoice through tomorrow.”

“Oh. Thanks. So is Melanie…?”

“It’s my personal opinion that Melanie’s not in any danger from Mary, and neither are the rest of us. But if she does prove to be dangerous, well, I’m around her a lot now, so… you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

Georgie nodded, clearly unconvinced. “Thanks for this.”

“Not a problem. If you ever need anyone else stalked for money, you have my number.”

When she got back to her office, Daisy was waiting for her. Her casts were off; Daisy had been a fast healer as long as Basira had known her.

“Hey,” Basira said.

“Hi. Need your eyes on something.”

“What is it?”

“I’m investigated a series of… arsons? People and things getting burned. But the way they’re catching fire, and the precision, is… odd. Know anything about something like that?”

“Maybe. What have you got?”

Daisy handed her a folder that definitely wasn’t allowed to leave the police precinct. Basira flipped through it.

“Hmm. Could be anything, really. I mean, to me it looks the most like the Cult of the Lightless Flame, from everything I’ve read about them, but they’re usually a lot more careful to clean up after themselves than this. They might be getting sloppy or rushed over something, or it might be something else. It’s not like the Desolation servants have exclusive dibs on fire or anything.”

“Okay, I understood about half of that. You can help?”

“Maybe. I’ll check things out when I’m back in the archives on Monday, see if I can dig up anything similar.”

“Is that safe?”

“What do you mean, safe?”

“I mean… you guys have a lot of stories of crimes, right? That the Institute doesn’t report to the police. I was wondering if there was a reason for that.”

“A reason?”

“Yeah. I mean, if I was a supernatural serial killer or something and there was a big research institute that all my witnesses and escaped victims went to to tell about me, I’d probably try to do something about that unless there was some kind o agreement in place about where that information went. I don’t want to… put you in the middle.”

“Oh. Well, there are a lot of secrecy and anonymity clauses and stuff, but I don’t know if there’s an unwritten ‘don’t tell the cops’ agreement. Nobody ever told me of anything like that. Anyway, we’re blowing up apocalypse rituals, so I think ‘police know of the time I magicked a guy off a skyscraper’ is pretty low on everyone’s list of priorities.”

“Yeah, maybe. Just… be careful, alright?”

“Hypocrite.”

\---------------------------

  
  


Living with Mary was somehow weirder the second time around, knowing what she was. Martin couldn’t really put his finger on why, but it probably had something to do with the small unnerving things she’d do at random times, like take something off a shelf that should be out of her reach with unsettling bone snapping noises, or turn her head around further than she should be able to to talk to him. He _knew_ she was just doing it to freak him out, he knew she was better at imitating humans than this, but it seemed rude to call her out on it.

If he hadn’t already been so used to the sense of low-level dread that permeated his workplace, it might’ve been a dealbreaker, but after thinking about the various aspects of his situation (not least of which, Mary had never asked him to pay any rent), he decided to treat it as an Annoying Roommate Habit, like living with someone who kept cooking elaborate meals and never washed their dishes. He’d tried to just decide not to be freaked out by it, in the hopes she’d get bored and stop, but it’s impossible to feel nothing when your roommate smiles brightly at you and you suddenly realise her entire mouth is full of just canines.

Weeks went by in the archives with nobody trying to kidnap him. Martin read statements, Mary typed them into the database, Sasha and Melanie worked on tagging, cross-referencing and statement follow-up, and Basira helped on Mondays and Tuesdays and was otherwise off being a private investigator. Only the ‘real’ statements, less than five per cent of them, went into the database, so the archives were mostly full of boxes of essentially useless paper, reports made by people who were mistaken, or delusional, or lying. Sasha, being the only person there qualified for real actual archival work, took charge in storing and organising those. She filed the original paper copies of the ‘real’ statements in among them, which seemed ridiculous to Martin, but when she started trying to explain how prior organisation preservation principles worked in archiving he quickly ran off to make everyone tea and left her to it before he could be subjected to an hour-long lecture on the history of library science.

Anyway, Martin was mostly concerned with mapping out the upcoming apocalypses. He’d expanded his movable pinup board to _two_ movable pinup boards, charting the bare details of the few apocalypses they knew to be recently foiled (Buried, Flesh, Desolation, Stranger), and everything they could find about the ones they weren’t sure about (all the rest). The Beholding had, as before, its own little card with a black X through it, which Basira asked him about.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I’ve decided to just ignore that one.”

“You’re ignoring the Eyepocalypse?”

“First of all, hilarious name. Second, yes. I don’t know if the Beholding ritual is coming up soon or what, but if it is I think it’s safe to say Elias is probably behind it.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.”

“And Elias hired us all to work in his Evil Temple of Being Watched all the Time, and can read minds, so I don’t think we could stop it if we wanted to. Anything we found out would probably be red herrings to get us out of the way, or actually manipulate us into participating.”

“So you’re hoping that if we stop all the other rituals, the other powers will be invested in stopping the Beholding, because we probably can’t.”

“Pretty much.”

“You realise they’re probably gonna do that by trying to kill us, right?”

“I… don’t really have a solution to that part right now. Except for us to try not to die, I guess? Has Peter properly, officially replaced Elias as head of the Institute? Because if so they can probably safely kill Elias.”

“Great. We should spread the word on the Secret Underground Spook Network. You have one of those?”

Martin blushed. “I don’t think they’d invite me if there was one. I don’t have any Archivist powers yet.”

“You looking forward to them?”

“Honestly? No. I don’t think they were very good for Jon. I’m… I’m a bit…”

“Scared?”

“Yeah.”

“I think that’s probably the idea. At least you know what to expect.”

“Heh. Yeah, I do.”

\--------------------------

  
  


Tim stood across the street and looked into the office building with binoculars. There was his next sacrifice to the Flame; that smug wealthy man who’d built a fortune on the misfortune of others. He was going to learn how easily blood money burned.

But not right now, because Tim had to get back to the motel and check out. He hadn’t gone back home since the Unknowing, shuffling his way between other sleeping places instead. He hadn’t done anything that would let the others know he was alive.

He should. He really should. He should stop hiding and just go the fuck home. He’d watched Jon’s _funeral_ from a _distance_ , for Christ’s sake, not wanting to show up and risk getting recognised. A funeral! But…

But out here, for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel the Beholding over him. Aside from Arthur’s incessant nannying, he wasn’t watched. He wasn’t restricted by some stuck-up manager holding memories of his brother’s fate over his head as a constant threat. Except to offer him a couch to sleep on or some cleanup help or a bit of advice so far as his philosophical development went, the Lightless Flame mostly left him alone. And if he refused help, then with the exception of Arthur who was trying to use Tim as a personal project to boost his ruined reputation, they shrugged and let him be.

He really should let them help him more, he knew. He was leaving too much evidence behind, and the police had taken notice. It was just… the idea of being monitored, of needing to rely on monsters and being so involved, still left a bad taste in his mouth after all that Beholding nonsense. But he knew they didn’t mean anything by it. He’d spoken to enough of the other members to know that this was standard procedure; everyone who came to the Lightless Flame brought the person they used to be with them and went on some crusade motivated by personal gain, or religious fervour, or revenge, or justice, and the way to deal with it was to simply let them get it out of their system. Eventually, the joy of the sacrifice would grow and burn away such concerns until they were ready to set themselves alight and be reborn in wax… or it wouldn’t, and they died.

Tim figured it was probably too early to tell if it was working on him. He still felt like a good guy, occasional murders aside. He targeted the scum who deserved it and left the innocent alone; he hated the others for what they’d done to innocent people just for the joy of destruction, because targeting the weak and innocent was easy, when there were more justified and satisfying sacrifices right there for anyone willing to put in a little effort. Blood money burned as well as hard-gotten money, and there was more of it, so why break some old woman’s boiler or melt an immigrant when the world was full of those just begging to be burned?

His sense of justice still felt the same, at least to him, but there was something growing in him; a quiet satisfaction with the completion of every sacrifice. The more he took, the more despair his victims felt, the more challenging the plan, the neater the execution, the better that warm feeling of satisfaction that lived in his heart. Maybe it would, in time, burn away other motivations, and finish turning him into one of them.

He should probably feel worried about that.

He did feel worried, a little. He felt a lot of things. What he didn’t feel, though, was sick.

He’d been away from the Institute for nearly two months, and he didn’t feel its absence at all.

That had been the main reason he’d gone off-grid, initially. He felt like… like he was free, forgotten about, and that if he showed up again and let the Eye fix on him the spell would be broken and he’d be trapped once more. Which was bullshit, obviously; if Elias wanted to know where he was, Elias knew where he was. He couldn’t _hide_. But the denial had helped, for awhile, until he couldn’t ignore the obvious reason he was free. The only thing that made sense.

The Eye didn’t have him any more, because another power had a stronger claim on his soul.

That had to be it. Tim didn’t really understand how these things worked, but the timing was undeniable; he’d walked out of that place after achieving his revenge, fallen in with the Lightless Flame and healed his burns way too fast to be natural, and suddenly he didn’t belong to the Eye any more. And if he had to be bound to some power, if freedom wasn’t an option…

Well, he was doing good out here. He wasn’t being watched or controlled out here, except when Arthur got clingy. And the cult had never tried to trap him with threats or coercion or magical contracts; so far as any of them were concerned, if he didn’t want to get on board he could just fuck off. That wasn’t actually an option for him, because he sure as hell didn’t intend to return to the Institute, but they weren’t aware he was trapped and had no intention of trapping him, which he very much appreciated. They were a bunch of sadistic murderers, but it seemed like everyone was, these days.

Even Tim was, now. And that would either kill him or save him.

All in all, things could be a lot worse.


	67. Chapter 67

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone eats cake!

Melanie stomped into Georgie’s house and put the takeaway down with rather more force than strictly necessary.

“You’re having a great day, then?” Georgie asked, looking up from the Admiral.

“I need another haircut.”

“Ah. Someone recognised you from – ”

“It’s all Martin’s fault! It had died down, mostly, then Martin was all, ‘oh, hey Melanie, you want to take down Elias, right? Well, I need a bunch of cameras pointed at this window so you should – ”

“Melanie.” Georgie got up and put an arm around her. “Breathe.”

“I am fucking breathing.”

“What did Martin make you do?”

“Nothing,” Melanie grumbled, defeated. “You’re right, I chose to get involved.”

“And you took down Elias!”

“I should’ve killed him. He’s still out there, being alive, with his stupid magic eyes and his smug… they’re all acting like it’s over, but it isn’t! He’s just harder to kill now! And we only went with this soft option because I was too incompetent to get the job done properly!”

“If you’d killed him, you’d be dead, right?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But everything we do ultimately makes the world worse anyway while we’re there, doesn’t it? The whole place is evil. So maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

“Yeah. It would.” Georgie wrapped her arms around her. “I don’t want you dead.”

“Well, that’s just being selfish,” Melanie joked.

“So I’m selfish. Fuck ‘em. You gonna serve up that Chinese or what?”

“I can’t, some cad is holding my arms hostage.”

“My arms now. Because I’m selfish.”

The standoff was resolved, of course, by the Admiral, who attempted to get into the takeout and required all four arms to restrain.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Basira walked into work two weeks later with news for the archive crew, but was distracted by the much more important presence of cake.

“Someone’s birthday?” she asked, scanning the room. Her money was on Martin, who sat red as a tomato while Sasha took pictures of him and Mary (who was cheerfully posing, apparently oblivious to his mood) and Melanie (who was hungrily eyeing the cake).

“Better!” Sasha grinned. “Basira, get in the photo, we want memories of this.”

“What about you?”

“Oh no, I don’t like pictures.”

“What are we celebrating?” Basira asked, dutifully crouching to get in the frame.

Martin spoke up. “Nothing – ”

“Martin’s first Compulsion!” Mary said cheerfully. “He asked me about tea this morning and I was forced to answer.”

“Oh, That’s… fast, isn’t it?”

“Faster than Jon,” Martin said glumly. “We think. We can’t be sure when Jon started, but…”

“Is this… a good sign or a bad sign?” Basira asked. “Getting these powers faster than Jon?”

“I’m hoping neither. I’m hoping it’s just because we know what we’re doing this time? But knowing our luck, it’s probably a bad sign.”

“You should try them out more,” Sasha said. “See how strong you are. Ask me something and I’ll try to resist.”

“I am _not_ going to do that.”

“You can try it on the People’s Church guys who are watching the Institute,” Basira suggested.

That got everyone’s attention. “What?”

“Yeah, that’s what I came to tell you guys. We’re under surveillance by the People’s Church.”

“Probably want to make sure we don’t interfere in their Dark ritual,” Melanie said. “That’s gotta be coming up soon.”

“Or maybe they think we’re going to do an Eye ritual,” Sasha said.

“Can’t we all just have an open agreement not to do any rituals?” Martin asked. “Everyone just signs a treaty or something? Save us all some time and lives?”

“We could suggest it,” Basira grinned. “Somehow I don’t think it’d catch on.”

“And even if you got all the humans and more, well, coherent manifestations like Mary on board, there are things out there that can’t be reasoned with that would probably keep trying,” Sasha said.

Mary shook her head. “No, that’s nothing to worry about. Only humans can do the rituals.”

“What? That can’t be right.” Melanie waved Sasha’s camera away and started cutting the cake. “There were tons of non-humans involved in the Unknowing. There was that ‘anglerfish’ thing and, and mannequins…”

“Yeah, twisted around the minds of the Circus,” Mary said. “But they couldn’t fuel it, any more than I’d have been able to. They could move stuff around and steal a skin and provide a chorus and all that, but we’re just scenery to… facilitate. Gregor Orsinov was human, and Nikola was made out of a human; all the drivers need to have the power only living animals like humans are born with.”

“Genuine fear,” Sasha said.

“Yeah!”

Basira accepted the plate of cake being pushed into her hands and thought, not for the first time, about how differently Mary seemed to conceive of the world to the rest of them. Once, out of curiosity, she’d had everyone on the team read the same statement about someone getting lost in an endless forest that had once been a small park, and discussed it with them, one by one. The humans had all had the same impression – the unfortunate guy had been marked by something, probably a manifestation of the Spiral, who’d drawn him in and attempted to devour him, and he’d had a lucky escape. Mary had told the opposite story, talking of the man taking his fear and wrapping himself up in it, drawing up the maze that other fearful humans had started building and adding his own fear onto it, but stopping before it killed him. The humans talked about the world of fear being something that happened to people; Mary talked about people’s fear as being something that happened to the world. Two perspectives that were functionally identical, except that they each put the burden of autonomy on the other side.

Basira didn’t waste her time trying to figure out which perspective, if either, was “true”. They were essentially different perspectives that described the exact same thing, so they were probably equally correct, and besides, they were all guessing how this fear thing worked anyway, just like the rest of the world was.

“So are we interrogating one of the People’s Church? I can probably go grab one.”

“Do they know you’ve spotted them?” Sasha asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t do anything yet. Keep the element of surprise.”

“If they are doing their ritual soon, though, we should learn about it as quickly as possible,” Melanie said.

“But we might need the element of surprise to stop it,” Sasha said. “If there’s another way to learn…”

“I’ll just keep an eye on them for now,” Basira said. “We can always grab one later, if we have to. Mary, don’t let them kidnap Martin.”

“I’m on it!” Mary said, with a salute.

Just then, a stranger walked in; an old lady, looking uncertain. She glanced uncertainly at the group and said, “Uh, I’m looking for the head archivist?”

“How can I help you?” Martin asked wearily as Mary pushed a plate of cake into his hands and Sasha prepared one for the newcomer.

“I’m Eleanor. I’m uh, here to make a statement?”

Sasha grinned widely like a proud parent. “The Archivist would love to take your statement! Go on, Martin.”

“I should make some – ”

“I’ll make her a cup of tea! You should take her to your office.”

Thus Martin and Eleanor were ferried to the office, and Sasha bustled off to make tea. Basira glanced at Melanie, who shrugged. Mary stared at the now-closed head archivist office door with a sort of fierce determination.

“So,” Basira said, “you’re the Archivist’s bodyguard now?”

“Yes!”

“I could try to talk Daisy into teaching you some krav maga, if you want.”

The delighted smile on Mary’s face was all the answer she needed. Melanie, for her part, groaned and buried her face in her hands. “That’s going to go _so badly_.”

“I’ll learn it very well!”

“See, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

\---------------------------

  
  


Peter _hated_ the Magnus Institute.

For the most part, he didn’t need to be there, which was a blessing. He had arranged things so that a rotation of assistants handled most of the day-to-day running of the place, requiring little more from him than the occasional email, but sometimes it was still necessary to go in and endure the creepy-crawly feeling of being watched that started to creep in the moment he let his guard down.

Of course, he had become very good, over the years, at not letting his guard down. There was nobody to notice as he wandered up to Elias’ – his – office after closing. He’d had to learn more about the archive staff than he’d ever cared to know, and he was starting to think that even cotnrol of the Panopticon might not be worth all this nonsense.

He just wanted to go back to sea. Damn his love of a good wager.

But he had what he needed now, and soon enough he could go back to completely ignoring most of his employees like any decent manager. He was ready to make his selection.

The rest was just down to timing.


	68. Chapter 68

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has a good time, Martin has a bad time.
> 
> Chapter contains references to infant death.

**Contains references to infant death.**

\-----------------------------

Harold Jackson was a dick.

He’d once found a woman who’d been trying to have a baby for almost ten years and finally succeeded, snuck into her house, and set the baby’s occupied crib alight in such a way that the mother would assume the fire was caused by the cheap baby monitor she’d been using.

Tim knew this because Harold had bragged about it at the last meeting of their congregation. So he didn’t feel remotely bad when Daisy Tonner, following his somewhat untidy trail of destruction, happened to track said destruction to Harold’s house and draw some wrong conclusions.

It was always a bit tricky to kill one of the congregation. Fire would usually stick, if it was hot enough, but sometimes wouldn’t. A bullet would sometimes kill them, but not always. Something about being part wax and carrying the flame of the Desolation in their hearts made their vulnerability… variable. Their faith, their self-conception, their feeding of the Desolation, what they believed themselves to be or be capable of, and much like Tim’s case in the Unknowing, just blind luck all seemed to play a part. If you waited long enough they’d eventually combust on their own, but babykillers didn’t deserve that kind of patience.

Anyway, Daisy didn’t seem to have any trouble with Harold. And she’d ‘solved’ her case, dispatched the evil cultist, so that should get her off Tim’s back, so long as he started being a bit more careful and didn’t give her reason to look closer.

This was fine. This Desolation thing was easy.

Everything would be fine.

\----------------------------

  
  


Martin got in to work late Monday morning. Mary had texted everyone to assure them he was not kidnapped, so nobody was particularly concerned until he stomped into the office with her looking like a zombie, jimmied Tim’s desk open and retrieved a bottle of vodka, which he used to top up a half-empty cup of tea to swig from.

“Everything okay there?” Basira asked.

“Yeah. Great. Life’s great. Why would you ask?” He added more vodka. Sasha carefully pried the bottle from his hands.

“Martin hasn’t been sleeping well,” Mary told them.

“Yeah, I wonder why that might be,” Martin snapped. “Would’ve been nice, maybe, for someone to warn me about the dreams.”

Silence.

“Oh,” Basira said.

“Wait, you didn’t know?” Melanie asked.

“No! How would I have known?”

“What dreams?” Sasha asked.

“Oh, just the horrible nightmares of that lady Eleanor who came in Friday, which I apparently witness every night with no ability to help now. So that was a fun discovery.”

“When you give a statement to the Archivist he silently haunts recurring nightmares of your trauma,” Basira explained. “Sorry. I thought you guys all knew.”

“Well I didn’t!”

“Wait,” Sasha said. “Martin and I both gave statements to Jon, and that never happened.”

“It stops when you work here,” Melanie said wearily. “I don’t know why.”

“Fantastic,” Martin snapped. “So we can save her a bunch of nightmares by tying her to a fear god instead. Any other ways to stop them?”

“I only know of the obvious,” Basira shrugged.

“The obvious?”

“You know.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Daisy’s dreams stopped after Jon, um, passed away.”

“Great backup plan. Good to know. I’ll be in the office.” He snatched the vodka out of Sasha’s hand. She immediately snatched it back.

“Not with that. We’re not losing you to alcohol poisoning.”

He glowered at her. “I’m technically your boss now, you know,” he said, unconvincingly.

Sasha just laughed.

She let him stew alone in the office for about ten minutes before going in with a fresh up of tea. Martin was behind his Weird Conspiracy Wall, staring not at the elaborate map of rituals, but a blanks space where he’d pinned a single card reading NIGHTMARES.

“Trying to make a plan?” Sasha asked.

“Does this make sense to you?”

“The… the word ‘nightmares’?”

“All of it. I can’t… I can’t _think_ today.”

“You’re drunk and sleep deprived,” she pointed out, setting the cup of tea on his desk.

“I’m not drunk. You won’t let me be.”

“Shouldn’t drink at work. Don’t want to get fired.”

He laughed a little at that.

“Look,” Sasha said. “It sucks that this is happening. We knew there’s probably be some… unexpected surprises with this whole Archivist thing – ”

“It’s not that,” Martin said. “I don’t like the idea that I’m apparently not going to get another restful night of sleep and neither is my victim – ”

“She’s not your victim, you dind’t do this.”

“ – but what gets me is that it shouldn’t have been a surprise.”

“Melanie and Basira didn’t know that we didn’t – ”

“Jon should have told us.”

“Oh.”

Martin sighed, and reached around her for the tea. “He must have been having these nightmares for months, at least. And he took so many statements! No wonder he was always so tired! He was going through this the whole time and he… we never noticed. He never said anything. And now that whole world of his experience is just… gone, with him.” Martin carefully sipped the tea, and put it back down before his shaking hands could spill too much of it. “We could have helped. We could have found a way to help. I tried! We tried! We kept Tim together, I got rid of Elias before Melanie could kill him and kill us all and before he could kill Jon – ”

“Wait, Elias was trying to kill Jon?”

“I think so? It doesn’t make any sense but there was this thing with that Leitner… it doesn’t matter right now. Point is, after everything, they both died anyway, and if we had’ve managed to do better – ”

“No amount of emotional support or cups of tea would’ve saved either of them from a collapsing building,” Sasha pointed out.

“I know! I know. But it’s just not fair that after everything, I wasn’t even there.”

“How do you think I feel. I was the getaway driver. When they didn’t come out of the building, I could have – ”

“If you’d gone in after them you’d probably be dead, too. Anything you could’ve done walking into that could only have made things worse, not better.”

“I know. But that doesn’t change what happened.”

The two sat in silence for a little while, until Martin ventured, “I can’t stop thinking that he went through this, you know? This whole Archivist thing. And I know I’m just starting out, I don’t really have much in the way of, of Archivist powers yet, but every time something happens I keep thinking that he went through this. Like it, it should make me feel closer to him, but it doesn’t. If just makes me realise how distant he was, because he was changing and not only did he not tell us about a lot of it, but we didn’t notice. And everything we do, to try to track new apocalypses, or learn more about any of this, it… takes us further away from how I feel like things are supposed to be, you know? It feels wrong. It takes us further from what we would be doing, if he were here, because if I’d managed to actually protect him then he’d be doing this and I wouldn’t.”

“It wasn’t your job to protect him.”

“You all seem to have decided that it’s your job to protect me.”

“Yeah. We’re in this together, as a group; that’s what we decided.”

“We should have been doing that for them, too.”

“Yeah. Look, should we get out of the office? Find somewhere else to – ”

“No, I… I think I should record a statement. And then look into these apocalypses a bit more. Maybe we should interrogate one of those People’s Church stalkers after all? Or try to track down Peter Lukas. I’m sure he’d know if a Lonely ritual were coming up.”

“That sounds like a great way to ingratiate ourselves to the new boss.”

“What’s he gonna do, fire us?”

“Or cast us into the Lonely.”

“… yeah, okay. Point.”

Sasha headed for the door. “Mary found a record of the failed Slaughter ritual. I’ll go get it, so you can… update your weird conspiracy wall.”

“Thanks.”

Sasha left, shaking her head. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for, accepting an archiving job.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Daisy strode into Basira’s PI office, sat down heavily and announced, “I quit the Force.”

“Oh! Uh… good. I mean, assuming you wanted to – ”

“Yeah. It was getting a bit too much. Too many cases, too much weird stuff ending up in my lap. I’m trying to concentrate on this murder-arsonist.

“The one you already… caught?”

“It’s more complicated. Feels like a setup. I think someone else is behind it, and when they screw up again and leave something for me to track, I’ll have them.”

“Oh. Right. I mean, you were pretty thorough in chasing down the guy you got, I’m sure you’d have noticed if – ”

“The chase isn’t over. Believe me. But there’s nothing I can do right now. Got any… lost cats that need finding, or whatever you usually get?”

“Actually, you’ll like this.” Basira grinned. “Seems I’ve already got a bit of a reputation for being the one you can take your _weird_ cases to. Helps that I can check their validity and use the Institute library and all that, y’know? So if you’re still up for a partnership in this little business – ”

“Then after all this, our jobs really haven’t changed much. Fantastic.”

“Of course they have! Now we have no backup and make way less money.”

“Sounds about right. Sign me up.”

\--------------------------

  
  


After interviewing Basira and Melanie about their dreams, Martin went through his closet until he found an old, oversized shirt that looked comfortable.

“Congratulations, you’re my new pyjamas,” he told the shirt, before grabbing a permanent marker and writing on it THIS IS JUST A DREAM. YOU ARE SAFE.

He wasn’t sure how to stop the dreams. But he was going to do everything he could to mitigate them.


	69. Chapter 69

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Archives gets a surprise.

“It was that cop,” one of them – Tim hadn’t bothered to remember everyone’s names – snarled, pointing accusingly at him. “The one that’s been after _him_.”

“We have no reason to believe that,” Arthur insisted. “Any number of things could’ve gotten Harold.”

“He’s right, for once,” Jude said. “If that cop had gotten anywhere near this dickhead, she would’ve gotten this dickhead. Harold was way better at avoiding attention than him.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jude,” Tim said.

“Any time.”

“If you’re so scared of one feral mongrel,” Tim said, “I’ll get rid of her for you. Alright? I’ve been watching her, and she’s got one thing, one person, tying her to her humanity. If you’re that bothered, I can take her down using Basira, and you can do what you like with what’s left.”

“You’re going to kill her little partner? How orig – ”

“No, Jude, I’m not that fucking crude at this. I’m going to make the cop kill her little partner, and I’m gonna make her think it was her fault.”

Jude, reluctantly, nodded. “Okay, that might be fun to watch.”

“I’ll try to arrange it so there can be an audience. _Just for you, Jude_. Alright?”

“Do we have anything important to discuss here, or have we just become a fan club of Arthur’s new pet?” someone snapped. “Only I’d like to get to the matter of that church at some point tonight.”

“Just fucking burn it down, Niamh, you don’t need anyone else for that,” someone else snapped.

Tim tuned out and waited until it was polite to leave. The group’s other business didn’t really concern him.

He needed to plan something special for dealing with Daisy Tonner.

\----------------------------

Martin attended his mother’s funeral alone. Mary, devoted to her self-appointed role as his bodyguard, travelled to the funeral with him and returned later to come home with him (“In case those People’s Church people make a grab for you,” thought they’d never done anything more than watch), but he didn’t want any of his friends actually there. He didn’t want them involved in that part of his life.

On the way home, Mary wasn’t… well, she tried to keep people happy, but she was still having trouble with how grief worked. Martin didn’t want to have to explain to her that no, she couldn’t make him feel better, and no, trying to cheer him up all night wouldn’t help. He still wasn’t sleeping properly, having altered his sleep schedule to match up with Eleanor’s as little as possible, and it was hard not to accidentally ask questions, and the whole thing was just… how had Jon dealt with it? Well. He hadn’t been mourning two friends, one of whom was… and also his mother at the same time, he supposed.

“I want to drop by the Institute and get some work done,” he told Mary on their way home.

“You have the day off. Compassionate leave.”

 _Yes, but I don’t want to sit in a big house and be sad while you try to figure out what kind of tea will make everything okay,_ he didn’t say. God, this was what he was like, wasn’t it? No wonder people got snappy with him.

Instead he just said, “I have some stuff to chase up. It’s fine.” The others would be there, working, but he could shut himself in his office for a bit, record a statement, just… try to be normal. He put a smile on his face for Rosie at the front desk, headed down the stairs, opened the door to the archives, made it halfway to his office, and screamed as something made of hair and teeth bit his face.

\---------------------------

Ten minutes ago, Melanie had been filing dud statements with Sasha, her friend. Now, things like ‘filing’ and ‘statements’ and ‘Sasha’ had far less meaning. She was on the high peak of an adrenaline rush, where only the most pertinent information existed – that is an inert object, _that_ is a pile of meat that isn’t a target, _that_ is a pile of meat that is. Cut the things that are targets until they are inert objects.

She couldn’t remember how the knife had gotten in her hand, but it was more effective at parting meat from meat than her fingernails had been. A simple metal plane that glided through the target, tearing it, incidentally, from the screaming not-target. The thing behind the not-target, she thought was a target for a second, but it wasn’t attacking and others were, so they were prioritised.

Beside her, somebody else was fighting with a gun. Other not-targets were pushing in a direction that she dimly recognised at containing the escape up the stairs, which was the correct way to go because that’s where all the targets were gathering. Right now, they weren’t fleeing; they were gathered as if to stop somebody from fleeing, which was alright, because there might be enough time to render them inert. But she didn’t like them blocking the exit in case they changed their mind and started to flee. She might not get them all.

She attacked faster, before they could change their minds.

The not-target who’d just entered was picked up by the maybe-target and carried away from the blocked exit, deeper into the archives instead. That made the maybe-target even lower priority since it couldn’t flee that way, so Melanie discounted it and focused on the others. They were trying to render her inert, too, but if she was lucky and careful, she should be able to get a lot of them before her knife stopped working. She still had enough blood inside to power her muscles, bones in a rigid enough order to swing her arm.

One of the targets had an unusual knot of bone that caught her knife and pulled it out of her grasp, and then it was gone before she could retrieve it. Another clawed at her face with a hand full of sharpened bone claws. She tore the hand off; now she had five knives.

Melanie fought.

\----------------------------

Martin barely registered the thing that took a chunk out of his cheek before it was in two pieces, courtesy of Melanie, and he was being thrown over Mary’s shoulder and sped into the office. Another grabbed for his arm, carving deep slashes with too many oddly-placed fingernails before it was slowed by a bullet to the chest from somewhere behind them. And then Martin was carried down through the trapdoor, into the dark of the tunnels.

Mary put him down, and he pulled out his phone for some light. Martin had avoided the tunnels since getting buried alive, but in his absence someone had made some minor changes. The patch of floor that had previously been caved in was whole again, which he didn’t have the energy to be surprised by, and the little room that he’d previously used for his concept map was instead half-full of… well, supplies. Crates of water, some dry food, and torch batteries seemed to make up the bulk of the supplies, along with about fifteen torches, but there were also small stashes of rope, chalk, and clothing; the sorts of things someone might see and think ‘oh, that’d be useful in a tunnel’ were dotted everywhere. It was immediately clear that the purpose of all this stuff was to refill the ten stuffed backpacks lined against the wall outide the little room, all ready for adventure.

Clearly someone on the archives team had seen the secret tunnels below the archives and thought ‘oh hey, a secret escape tunnel, let’s be ready to use that if we need to’. Martin felt like an idiot for not doing it himself. Whoever had arranged it seemed to think they were going to need enough supplies for a seige, but hey, if you’ve got the storage space.

Mary shoved a torch and bag into his arms and grabbed some for herself.

“We can’t just leave!” Martin protested. “The others are up there fighting a dozen monsters!”

“Five.”

“What?”

“Five, not a dozen. And they’re not monsters. Can you help them in any way?”

“No – ”

“Then we should go!” she grabbed his wrist and started pulling him down the tunnel. Just then, the trapdoor opened again, and Mary put herself defensively between Martin and the invader, but it was only Sasha.

“Let’s go!” she gasped, grabbing a bag.

“The oth – ”

“Right behind me!”

And no sooner had the three started to head down the tunnel again than Basira backed into the tunnel, basically tossing Melanie down the stairs ahead of her.

“There’s still one up there,” Melanie growled, getting to her feet. “The big guy!”

“We’ve put bullets and knives in three of his hearts,” Basira said. “How many more do you want to go looking for?”

“He’ll run out eventually!” She bolted back upstairs. Basira, swearing at her, drew her gun once more and followed.

Martin knew there was nothing he could do to help, he knew that trying to follow them back up would only put both of them in more danger, giving them someone else to keep an eye on, but he still felt like a coward as he bolted down the tunnel with Sasha and Mary.

“If they get down here,” he gasped, trying to ignore the stitch he was developing and the blood pouting down his face and arm, “can you fight them?”

“I can distract them while you run,” Mary said. “I can’t win. They are the opposite of me; they’re made for this and I’m not.”

The things attacking were obviously of the Flesh or the Slaughter, neither of which sounded like an opposite to the Stranger to Martin, but he didn’t have the breath for a metaphysical conversation. He followed Sasha as she gasped, “I think artefact storage should still be this way!” and tried to ignore the fact that every time he’d been in artefact storage in the past things had gone very badly.

They didn’t find artefact storage, in the end. With how the tunnels seemed to change, martin wasn’t surprised. They pulled themselves into a narrow side tunnel and martin tried very hard to keep breathing and not think about enclosed spaces and digging, digging through soft earth in search of the next air pocket.

“What did you mean about those things being the opposite of you, Mary?” Sasha asked. “Why does that make them stronger?”

“They are stronger at this. At deconstruction and devouring. I am the other, constructed to be human. They are human, deconstructed to become other. I am the parts that you fear coalescing into a whole; they are born whole, and feared for their decoalescence into parts. It’s frankly absurd that humans are afraid of both of those things. Is there anything you’re not afraid of?”

“Not all that much, no,” Martin admitted. “Give a human five minutes to think and I swear they just come up with something else to be afraid of.”

“Ah.” Mary nodded. “Building your Tower of Babel.”

Martin laughed wearily. “I don’t think that story’s supposed to be about fear. We build a lot of other important stuff, you know.” But he supposed that to something like Mary, the fear was probably the important part.

Sasha had pulled a first aid kit out of her bag and started bandaging his bleeding arm. He let her work in silence, after which point she bandaged her own bloody leg, and then dressed the bite on Martin’s face. He didn’t want to think about how badly that one was going to scar. Assuming he lived long enough for it to scar.

“Any spooky Archivist powers that can help us here?” Sasha asked.

“Sure. When the meat things follow us down, I’ll ask them invasive questions and get them caught in an awkward conversation. They’ll be so embarrassed, they’ll leave us alone.”

Sasha laughed.

“I’m still not a fan of this whole evil fear power thing,” Martin continued, “but even for this deal, we got cheated. There are people out there who can set stuff on fire or cast you into isolated alternate dimensions. What am I supposed to do, know people to death?”

“Well, if you could ‘know’ when it’s safe to leave the tunnels at least, that would be a big help,” Sasha said. “We’re not getting any phone signal down here.”

“Ha. Give me another six months and I might get that power.”

"Only six months? You ARE ambitious."


	70. Chapter 70

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie makes a discovery.

When the three ventured back up, everything was over. Apparently the screaming, crashing and gunshots from the archives had attracted security, who had of course immediately called the police, but by the time they’d scraped together enough Sectioned officers to respond to a Magnus Institute issue, all of the attackers except one were dead, and he’d fled. Through the front door. Which must have been very entertaining to the various Definitely Not Dark Cultists who were still casually hanging about the Institute every day.

Martin mentally prepared for the inevitable stream of statement givers they could expect over the next week describing a blood-streaked meat man charging out a door he could barely fit through into the street. They should probably dig up Gertrude’s old statement forms and get them to write them down, save having to explain that no, the head archivist can’t take your statement in person, and we’re not going to answer any questions about why we had a Giant Meat Man here.

When Martin, Sasha and Mary stumbled into A&E (Basira and Melanie had been taken in by an ambulance some time ago), the nurse on reception actually rolled her eyes and called “It’s more from the Magnus Institute!” in sight. It… probably wasn’t a great sign when the emergency room staff could not only recognise everyone from your workplace on sight, but had seen you enough to be actually fed up with you.

At least they had fantastic health insurance.

Various wounds treated, the group gathered in Basira’s private hospital room. Mary was of course fine, as was, miraculously, Melanie, and Martin and Sasha’s wounds were superficial, but Basira had broken two arms and a leg before managing to gently convince their final assailant to flee, with the assistance of a lot of bullets and a screaming, blood-soaked Melanie.

“They came up through the pipes,” Melanie said. “Through the fucking plumbing. Weirdest shit I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re a professional ghost hunter who works at the Supernatural Trauma Factory,” Basira pointed out. “Didn’t you get shot by a ghost once?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen a guy dislocate every joint in his body so he could ooze his massive fleshy body through a pipe barely the size of his skull like a twitchy, bleeding string of play-dough. Well, I have now, I guess.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what we did to attract their attention,” Martin said, speaking slowly so as to avoid exacerbating the chunk of flesh missing from his cheek. “The Last Feast was ages ago and we’ve had basically nothing to do with the Flesh; what did they want from us?”

“They probably think we’re going to try our apocalypse next,” Sasha said. “We should find some way to deal with that, with… everyone, I guess. You know, I did not think my library science degree was going to lead to this kind of work.”

\------------------------------------------

  
  


“You were attacked by meat people?!”

“There were only five of them,” Melanie shrugged, like it was nothing.

“Oh, well, that’s okay then. Only five meat people.” Georgie shook her head. “That whole place is so…”

“Believe me, I know. Anyway, I gotta get back in later today, catch up on some – ”

“Back to the archives?”

“Yeah.”

“The place you got attacked by meat people.”

“Yeah. It’s… where I work, so…”

Georgie narrowed her eyes. “Why are you really going back?”

“I told you, I’ve got some paperwork to tie up,” said Melanie, the World’s Most Terrible Liar.

“At the job you hate and can’t leave.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. I’ll come with you. Give you a lift.”

“I don’t need babysitting, Georgie.”

“I know, but forgive me for being a bit worried about you going back to do some ‘paperwork’ in a place where you were just _attacked by a bunch of meat men_.”

“Okay, fine! You caught me! I want to scout the archives and make sure there’s no more waiting for us.”

“Doesn’t the Institute have security for that?”

“Security weren’t exactly helpful last time. I have to go.”

“You should rest. You’ve been through – ”

“Stop telling me what to do! I’m already trapped in that fucking place with Elias out of my reach, and people on the street treat me like a crazy idiot, I don’t need it from you, too!”

“Melanie, that’s not what I – ”

“Yes, it is! Just… just stay out of my way, okay? I have to go check for threats. Just… wait at home and stay out of my way.”

Melanie stormed off before Georgie could reply.

\---------------------------------

  
  


The archives smelled of blood.

Of course they did. There was blood everywhere, and bits of meat. Melanie had the distinct sense that in a decently run workplace, someone would have stopped her from returning. There would still be police, cleaners, guards… something. Instead she just tore through the police tape, propped the dislodged door back up in its frame, and took a look around.

It was just how she remembered, except for the little police markers everywhere and the rather worse smell of ageing blood. The archives were sealed for humidity control, which would’ve been great if the humidity controls still worked; instead, it just trapped the miasma in, stinking up everything. Several of Sasha’s carefully organised boxes of statements were scattered everywhere and covered in blood. She was going to hate that.

Melanie picked up a chair leg as an impromptu weapon, cursing herself for not bringing a knife, and began to search. She kept her eyes on the corners, over the shelves, on the ceiling (people generally didn’t look up, making above an excellent ambush position), and nearly walked right into the tall gentleman who had appeared in the middle of the room.

She recognised him just in time to avoid clubbing him over the head with her chair leg – Peter Lukas. Not an attacking flesh monster.

That didn’t make her want to attack him any less, but something distant and dangerous in his gaze stayed her hand.

“It’s Melanie, right? Working alone today?”

“Uh, yeah. Can I… help you?” she asked awkwardly, hiding her bloodstained impromptu weapon behind her back.

“Indeed! Actually, there’s been a bit of a paperwork issue regarding archival staff employment. Nothing major, I assure you! But I need someone from the archives team to look through these papers and make sure the names line up, and since you’re the only one here… would you mind?” He held out a folder, which Melanie cautiously took.

“Uh… sure. I can do that.”

“Much appreciated! I’d have one of my assistants do it, but apparently there’s some sort of information privacy issue and it has to be one of you. I need this by five o’clock, will that be a problem?”

“I can try to – ”

“Excellent! Good day, Melanie.”

She glanced down at the folder, and when she looked up, he was gone. Which was kind of a relief, honestly.

 _Well, I guess this is how my day is going now_ , Melanie shrugged. She pushed a few teeth off her desk, put down some scrap paper to protect Lukas’ files from the blood, and got to work.

It really was just… nonsense paperwork. Photocopies of everyone’s employment contracts had been provided, and apparently she was supposed to compare the names on the forms to the names in a more detailed document about archival employment policies and verify that they were the same. Melanie didn’t understand why they had to be named in the second document – wouldn’t that mean it had to be altered every time the archive employment roster changed? – but it was probably to do with some mystical binding bullshit. God, she hated being trapped here.

Skimming the document for names wasn’t exactly riveting. The policies were at least written in plain English, so she wasn’t wading through mind-numbing legalese, but legalese might’ve been preferable since she could tune it out and focus on the names. She kept catching herself actually reading the document, meaning she quickly learned that they had a tea and lunch allowance that she hadn’t known about before, and she could make the Institute pay for her pastries. Nice.

It was on the second page of the document that she found the clause that changed everything.

  
  


**CONTRACT DURATION OF ARCHIVAL ASSISTANTS**

**An Archivist is entitled to employ assistants at the discretion of the Institute, whose contracts are to remain in effect for the duration of the Archivist’s contract and automatically terminated upon the Archivist’s termination. In the event of –**

  
  


Melanie couldn’t focus enough to read any further. She didn’t have to. Because if she was reading that right… that meant…

Fuck.

Well, this put everything in a new light, didn’t it? Oh, she could see the game now – they’d been free, in the clear, and the Martin had gathered them all and put on his little act and pulled them right back in. His act didn’t fool her. She’d helped put Elias away, she knew how manipulative Martin was. Oh god, did it go that far back? It did, didn’t it – she could just picture it, her out there trying to kill Elias, and Martin must have seen the perfect opportunity. _Help me, Elias, and I’ll help you_.

Nobody seemed to care that a prison wouldn’t mean anything to someone with Elias’ powers, that all putting him away had done was protect him from Melanie. But that was by design, wasn’t it? Keep Elias safe, remove Jon, Martin could slip into Jon’s role and re-entrap them before anyone knew what was going on and cart around his fucking monster bodyguard to protect him if they figured it out; oh, and she’d fooled Melanie for so long, too, _god that pissed her off_. Mary didn’t have to be there; Melanie knew that, even if the others weren’t sure. Melanie knew because when they’d been away, and Melanie had gotten sick from staying away from the Institute, Mary hadn’t had any problems. She’d been fine.

She was here by choice, as part of some deal with Martin.

It was so obvious, now. Martin had made a big show of hating Elias and then put together a plan that perfectly protected him; as soon as Jon was out of the way, Elias held up his end of the bargain and gave Martin the Archivist position. And since then the rest of them were just being put in danger, fighting goddamned meat monsters to protect their precious Archivist. Martin had been so quick to work to convince everyone he should take Elias’ offer, hadn’t he? And so eager to get everyone to sign new contracts.

Melanie had even thought it weird, at the time, that everyone had to sign new contracts when only Martin’s position was changing. And Martin had dismissed her concerns.

Well. Melanie saw a way out of this hellhole now, for herself and Basira and Sasha. Even if killing Elias would’ve killed them all, which maybe would have been worth it… they had a better option, now. Jon’s death hadn’t killed them. Neither would Martin’s.

It was time to cut their ties with the Institute.


	71. Chapter 71

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie expresses herself.

“So can I watch? When you take on the cop?”

“Trying to sabotage me, Jude?”

“Fuck no. I wouldn’t need to if I wanted to. She’s going to rip you to pieces and it’s going to be fucking hilarious.”

“Appreciate the vote of confidence, as ever. Why are we burning down this church again?”

“In theory it’s because Niamh has some beef with the People’s Church group running out of it.”

“And in practice?”

“I owe Niamh a favour and I’m sick of hearing her whine about it.”

“And now you can owe me a favour instead!”

“Yeah, I’m not worried. You’ll get yourself killed before you have a chance to call it in. Think you’ve got enough juice in you to light up a little dry wood, Stoker?”

“I think, somehow, I might be able to manage that difficult task. You take the front, I take the back?”

“I’m giving the orders here, Stoker.”

“Of course, Your Great Majesty. What’s the plan?”

“I take the front, you take the back.”

Tim bowed mockingly and headed for the back of the church. Inside, people were singing. He waited until Jude was well and truly gone before kicking aside most of the rubble they’d used to block the back door and checking to make sure it wasn’t locked. Then he headed well away from the door to start his fire further along the wall.

His line of sight to Jude’s inferno was blocked by the building itself, but he could see the orange haze, hear the screams. The panicked throng of churchgoers headed for the back door, threw their bodies against it until it burst open, and ran out into the night just as Tim’s fire got going.

“The door barricade didn’t hold,” he told Jude as she rounded the corner.

“And you didn’t stop anyone?”

“You said the priority was taking down the building. Some of us aren’t as powerful in the fire front as you.”

She looked at his efforts and rolled her eyes. “You’re fucking pathetic, Stoker. I might as well have done the job alone. At this rate you really aren’t going to survive.”

“Is that actual worry in your voice? Miss Perry, are you actually concerned for my welfare?”

“What? No.”

“Oh my god, you are! I didn’t think you had it in you! I’m touched; I’ve never had a big sister before!”

“If you _ever_ call me your big sister again I _will_ burn your face off, Stoker. I just want you to live long enough to get ripped apart by that cop. It’ll be the funniest thing ever and it’ll be _so embarrassing_ for Arthur.”

“Oh, I definitely believe you, Jude.”

“You fucking better.”

\--------------------------

  
  


The archives were mostly cleaned by the time Martin and Mary got into work the next day, although the air smelled unnervingly like blood and several gore-stained boxes of statements had been stacked in a corner under a tarp made from a biohazard bag. (In any normal place, Martin couldn’t help thinking, those statements would have to be disposed of, but the cleaners must have had previous tangles with management on the sanctity of statements in the Magnus Institute. God this place was an OHSW nightmare.)

Sasha wasn’t in yet (it was early) and Basira was still in hospital, but Melanie sat at her desk, dutifully typing away at her computer. She didn’t look like she’d slept. Or showered. Or ate anything.

“What time did you get in?” Martin asked, and only realised he’d accidentally Compelled again when she answered “About six last night.”

“You’ve been here all night?!”

“Yes.”

Right. Uh. He should… watch how he phrased things, firstly. And also probably make some tea. Usually he made tea for the whole crew every morning, so he’d wait for Sasha, but Melanie definitely needed tea right now. He left Mary to her favourite task of bullying a friend into basic self care and went to put the kettle on.

Chamomile, normally, for something like this, because Melanie hated lavender. Yes. And with an extra spoon of sugar that she’d pretend not to notice, because Melanie liked her tea sweeter than she’d admit to. He should probably replace the vodka he’d taken from Tim’s desk… from the spare desk… for situations like this, or perhaps not, since giving Melanie access to vodka right now was probably a bad idea.

Stupid, stupid. He’d said they were all in this together, that was the agreement, and they’d been attacked by meat monsters and he’d just let her leave the hospital alone, obviously traumatised. He’d assumed she’d go off to Georgie or some friend or something, but she shouldn’t have had to. They should’ve made sure she was okay, so she wouldn’t come into work and just work all night in a bloody room as some kind of weird trauma reaction. Had it even been cleaned yet when she’d gotten in? Or had she just sat among the bloody mess and started doing fucking paperwork?

God. He owed her, and everyone, such an apology, when they were all in the right mind to discuss it. He was a bad coworker, a bad boss, and a bad friend. How was he screwing this up?

He settled tea on Mary’s desk and handed Melanie’s to her.

“Melanie, are you – I mean, I would like to know if you’re okay.”

“Mm.” She set the tea down carefully.

“I see Mary’s gone somewhere.”

“I sent her to artefact storage for something. It should take a while for her to get back.” Her voice was strangely neutral, hollow. She stood up. “Are you at least going to tell me why you did it?”

“Why I did what?”

“Why you teamed up with Elias! Why you killed Jon! Why you trapped us here!” she snarled. “It must’ve been a long time in the making, since you had to fake being smitten – ”

“Melanie, what are you talking about?!”

“Your whole Archivist power play! Did you really think we wouldn’t figure it out eventually? You might have saved Elias from me, but there’s another way out, and you’ve only yourself to blame!”

The weapon in her hand was just a butter knife, but as she leapt over the table she thrust it toward his throat with such force that it drove right into the arm he flung up to protect himself. Had said arm not been wrapped in bandages due to the claw cuts on it, it would’ve slipped right between the bones; as it was, it cut most of the way through, then she pulled it out to stab again, toward his throat.

Martin had had just about enough of this.

Martin had put everything he had into protecting the love of his life, only for him to die. He’d sacrificed his humanity to protect these people and the world. He’d gone to the funeral of his only surviving family member, only to come home and be _attacked by meat monsters in his own workplace_ , had come back to work the very next day trying really hard not to think about it, and now one of the people he’d sacrificed himself to the Institute for was _accusing him of killing Jon_ and trying to kill him! Martin had no idea what was going on, but he’d had enough of it.

Blood was dripping from the knife wound in his arm, and coming towards his face was the weapon that had made it and a mouth full of teeth. Martin ducked, twisted to protect his face, and saw a vulnerable spot in his attacker that he could reach, so he lashed out with the only weapon he had.

And sank his teeth into Melanie’s throat.

He managed to break the skin, but he knew it was a hopeless move. Some kind of deep, manic rage had gripped her, and this was the same woman who’d torn those meat monsters apart the previous day, so there was nothing he could really do as the knife came down. But then Melanie wasn’t on him; he was pushed back, and she was on the other side of the room, and Mary was standing between them.

Martin spat out a strip of human flesh, incredibly grossed out, and got up, ready to run. But apparently it was already over; Melanie was unconscious, blood dripping from her head, and Mary was calling an ambulance.

So they went back to the hospital. Mary, once she’d determined that Martin wasn’t dying, kept apologising to the unconscious Melanie over and over, saying she hadn’t expected her to hit her head like that, begging her to wake up. Martin hoped that Melanie was okay, but he also kind of hoped she wouldn’t wake up until they were in separate rooms. He didn’t want to be attacked again.

His wounds were stitched up by the same doctor as last time, who looked incredibly ticked off that he was back again, and then he had to wait around until some Sectioned police could question him about why his coworker had tried to kill him with a butter knife. He didn’t know.

Then he got a call from Sasha, asking why nobody was in the office, and decided that Mary could deal with explaining that. He needed some air. And space. And people not trying to kill him.

What the fuck had that been about?

A woman waiting in her car in the hospital parking lot was wearing a necklace with a People’s Church insignia. Got, they were bad at spying on people.

Still. Team Archives should probably deal with the People’s Church sooner, rather than later.

They should make a plan for that.


	72. Chapter 72

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin is finally allowed to use the braincell.

“She attacked me,” Martin explained to Basira.

“She what? No, that doesn’t make sense. She saved your life the day before.”

“I know! But unless the person in the bed down the hall is some Stranger disguised as her or something… she was ranting, didn’t really make sense, but she accused me of killing Jon.”

“Did she think you were someone else?”

“No. No, she knew it was me. I think something must have influenced her mind? Maybe she found a Leitner or something?”

“Melanie’s not stupid. She wouldn’t read a book without checking for a bookplate.”

“Some other artefact, then. She sent Mary down to artefact storage, I thought to get her out of the way so she could kill me, but maybe she was trying to infet her with something? We don’t know what Mary is or isn’t immune to down there…”

“You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions based on no evidence.”

“I know. I just wish I knew what was going on! I hate not knowing or understanding any of this!”

“Does Martin hate that, or does the Archivist hate it?”

“Oh, don’t start with that. Yes, I’m sure the spooky metaphysical eyeball is making me want to know more stuff, but even if I wasn’t the Archivist I’m pretty sure I’d want to know why one of my own friends tried to kill me with a butter knife.”

“And now she’s… ?”

“In a medically induced coma. Mary used some trick Daisy taught her and messed up Melanie a bit more than she meant to.”

“I should never have asked Daisy to teach her.”

“It’s fine, Melanie will heal fine, it’s just that when she’s awake she’s… unreasonable… and hurts herself more. So they’re keeping her asleep.” He chewed his lip. “I hope it’s just her normal anger management problems and she didn’t read a Leitner or anything, because if something’s killing her brain or whatever while she’s asleep…”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. As you said, she’s always had anger management problems, and she’d hate being bedridden even more than I do.”

“Ha, yeah. Two broken elbows looks…”

“Inconvenient. It’s very fucking inconvenient. Sasha set up this computer thing for me so I can read books on the screen, but I can’t wait until I can do, y’know, absolutely anything else.”

“Everything was normal last week, and now we’re down two people and the archives smell like rotting blood. How did things change so quickly?”

“Eh, being police was the same, a lot of the time. You think you’re frustrated; I just convinced Daisy to go into business with me and ended up in hospital. She’s just got her PI license and she is _not_ a customer oriented person.”

“Well, on the bright side, any really dumb or annoying clients you have, you won’t ever have to deal with again after you get out of here. They’ll have one conversation with her and never come back.”

“You’ve described very nearly all of my clients.”

“Great, you’ll have more free time to protect me from meat monsters.”

“A noble calling. Will you still be alive to protect when I have working elbows and ankles again?”

“I’ll make sure to be. Just for you, Basira.”

\----------------------

  
  


Sasha sipped the tea that Martin had put in front of her on his way to his office and wondered if she should go check on him. She wasn’t being protective or overly clingy or anything; it wasn’t like she was worried something was going to jump out and grab him the instant he was out of sight. And it wasn’t that she needed to get out from under the gaze of Mary, who kept looking at her like… well, Sasha didn’t know if Mary was overly concerned about Sasha’s mental health as a result of the Meat Thing Attack (since her experience with human responses to things was still pretty limited), or if she was studying her to determine the response she, Mary should portray. Or maybe Mary was being completely normal and it was just her vgue aura of Stranger creepiness mixed with the Institute’s general feeling of being watched that was putting Sasha on edge.

No, none of those things could be why she wanted to go talk to Martin instead of sitting in the suddenly very empty room with Mary. Becaue she trusted Martin, and she trusted Mary, and she’d always been the laid-back one, dammit; those sorts of things couldn’t put her on edge, she was the chill person in the office.

She just wanted to go talk to him because… she wanted to procrastinate for a bit, before getting into re-sorting all the files that had been knocked off the shelves in the fighting. Yeah.

Martin’s office was arranged so that his Weird Conspiracy Wall wasn’t visible from the visitor side of his desk, so as not to freak out guests to the archives. This also meant it wasn’t visible from his desk, so he was leaning against the back wall, hands curled around a cup, staring at said wall, as she walked in.

“Hey,” she said, walking over. He flinched noticeably when she got within arm’s reach – right, right; he’d been attacked by someone he trusted yesterday – so she backed up and casually sat on the edge of his desk instead. “What’s up?”

“Do you think the Eye makes people stupid?” he asked.

Sasha blinked. “What?”

“Just a thought. Some of the stuff written about it, they call it things like ‘that which sees all and comprehends none’, things like that. And I, I haven’t really got enough flashes of information myself to be sure yet, but Jon used to say that most of what he got was useless, like there was no sense of control of what might be useful or relevant, no curation of the information before putting it in his head. And in the nightmares, when I’m watching Eleanor suffer? it’s not… it’s not like I can’t move, necessarily, to help her; it’s more that it can’t occur to me to, like there’s just no way to arrange things in logical steps to help, so I can’t act.”

“You think the Eye’s making you dumber?”

“Yeah. it’s harder to… my thinking’s very linear, these days. This doesn’t make proper sense.” He gestured to his concept map. Sasha risked getting close enough to look. It looked how it always did to her.

“I thought,” Martin continued, “that it was the lack of sleep. But I got a good night’s sleep last night, ate a nutritious breakfast, drank water, did all that. And I still can’t see most of what’s on this wall.”

“That might be a trauma response. You’ve had a lot of trauma recently.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But it… it honestly hasn’t made sense for awhile, since I became the Archivist, so…”

“So, since Jon and Tim died, you mean?”

“Hmm. Yeah. Good point.”

Sasha looked at the wall more closely. “What do you mean, you can’t see it?”

“I mean just that. I don’t see the pattern. It’s just notecards and string and I can only see it linearly. Like… okay, here. This card: The Buried. Linked to one listing the date and location of the ritual, and this one here with how we think Gertrude foiled it. I look at it, and that’s all I see; the when, the where, the possible how. Just what the string leads to. It’s not invisibly connected to anything else; I’m not seeing the second and third order connections that aren’t worth marking; I’m not seeing the implications. It’s like there’s no pattern to intuit – the _only_ information here is what’s marked with string.”

“Is that… not how these things work? I’d never actually seen one of these in real life until you started doing it.”

“No, it isn’t! This was _informative_ when I started building it. The whole point of noting and connecting the main nodes was to make it easier to see the other connections in the noise. The strings are just a, a scaffold; I should be able to look at them and see into the intricate web of infor…” Martin trailed off, and thoughtfully sipped his tea. He put his cup down, frowning, and curled his left hand into a fist, rubbing the knuckles.

Then he laughed.

“Um,” Sasha said. “Are you okay?”

“Okay? Yeah. I’m a _fucking idiot_ , is what I am. It was even _under my fingernails_ , that’s _insultingly_ on the nose.” He shook his head. “I think I just figured out why Elias picked me for Archivist.”

“Yeah?”

“He stole me. From the Web.”

“Wait, what?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you’ve got a little Spider making mischief in your archives, you can put up with him or kill him, but if you so happen to have a vacancy for a position that’ll connect him much more deeply to the Eye instead, well, that’s a problem that solves itself, isn’t it?” He frowned at his own fist. “At least, I think that’s how this works. Plenty of statements have people marked by more than one of the entities, but usually just as, y’know, victims. I’d assume that for things that require commitment… ugh, I wish we had more solid information on how any of this works.”

“You served the Web?”

“I… think so? I wasn’t lying to you about it or anything, I’m literally only figuring this out now. There was a thing with a spider film and cobwebs in my hand and paralysis and…”

“And a weird fucking conspiracy wall, yeah. Martin, all or those things are extremely obvious signs, how did you not… ugh, stupid question. Web. You were being controlled.”

“I don’t think I was. I mean, it’s the Web, so we can’t be sure, but I think it was just kind of an accident? Like people surviving Leitners. Wrong artefact, right choices, and suddenly you’re caught up in it. Until you give yourself to the Eye instead, I guess.”

“Is this something we should… worry about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, won’t the Web be angry? That you were stolen?”

“I don’t think the Web can feel things like anger or make plans for people, it’s a primal fear.”

“You know what I meant! Its servants. It’s the Web, so you might call it an accident but I think it’s far more likely you were someone’s pawn, and if Elias stole you – ”

“Then if I had a puppetteer, they either wanted me stolen, or they were terrible at their job and probably not a problem,” Martin pointed out. “But I don’t that’s it. I don’t think anyone’s using Martin Blackwood as the lynchpin of their evil plans. If someone wanted to put a pawn here on purpose they would’ve used you, or maybe Tim; definitely not me. I’m mostly scared because it looks like two primal fear entities were having a metaphysical fist fight in my brain and _I didn’t even notice_. If I didn’t even realise what was happening, how can I know how much of me is actually me, and how much is the Archivist? Especially since the Archivist part of me is only going to get stronger?”

 _I knew I should’ve pushed harder to be the Archivist_ , Sasha thought to herself. But maybe not, because then, logically…

“Well,” she said, “you’re in a much better position this time.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. You were in the dark last time. You know you’ve got the Eye, and it’s a choice you made on purpose, so if it does change you, you’ll be more likely to notice. And you’ve got us to keep an eye out.”

“Ha, yeah. That’s true. We agreed to do this as a group.”

"We did indeed."


	73. Chapter 73

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Peter advance serious plans. Tim prepares for maximum showmanship.

Peter looked down at Melanie’s unconscious form, scalpel in hand.

“I am quite sorry about this,” he explained, “but this might get a little messy, I’m afraid. I’m only guessing that what I’m looking for is even there, and if it is, there is still no guarantee that I, without the gifts of your patron, will be able to see it. But here we are.”

He stepped forward and pulled the sheets back to reveal the bullet scar on her leg. The tip of the scalpel went in easily and he slowly, carefully pushed further in, waiting for it to hit the hard pellet.

Movement. Melanie’s eyes flew open, bloodshot with rage. She raised some kind of heavy monitoring device over her head, prepared to slam it down on him.

“Oh, shi – ”

When staff responded to the ruckus in Melanie’s room, they found a lot of ruined equipment, but no intruder. And no patient.

\----------------------------

  
  


Sasha made sure that no one else was within hearing range before sitting next to the young man at the bus stop.

“Hi,” she said. “Waiting long?”

He shrugged.

“I’m Sasha.”

“Joe,” he said, gruffly.

“You’re with the People’s Church of the Divine Host, right? I’m not looking for trouble,” she added quickly as Joe looked panicked. “I’m here with a message.” She handed Joe a notecard. “The Archivist wants to talk to your boss, whenever’s convenient. This is his phone number. You’ll make sure it gets to the right person?”

“… Yeah.”

“Right. Have a great day, Joe.”

\---------------------------

  
  


One thing that Tim had noticed about the cult was that once their leaders had committed to an idea, they didn’t back down. Admitting being wrong was seen as a sign of weakness, resulting in a group where the majority would move back and forth between supporting the conflicting opinions of a handful of self-styled leaders, who would double down on their positions no matter what. So, somehow, Arthur’s impulse decision of bringing aboard a random guy with potential as the start of a bid to boost their numbers had become An Issue. It wasn’t just Arthur any more; a good quarter of the cult were somehow deeply invested in Tim, specifically, because they wanted to see if Arthur would regain any credibility.

Personally, Tim didn’t see what the big deal was. It was pretty common for the cult to grow by bringing in someone with a spark of potential and seeing whether or not they survived. The only difference between him and most of the congregation was that he’d gotten unwittingly caught up in Arthur’s pissing contest. And man, was Arthur desperate; the whole Agnes thing had not left him with much power, and his little spell away landlording and Corruption-fighting arson hadn’t done much to dull the scorn against him.

So he, and half the congregation, were really invested in Tim’s ongoing skirmish with the ex-cop that was still stalking him. It didn’t help that Jude had started a betting pool. People who didn’t give a shit about Tim sure cared about 10-to-1 odds on “Tim bleeds out after she breaks his spine”.

“Jude. Jude. I need your help,” Tim said, climbing into her window.

“You’re not sleeping on my couch, Stoker. Kill someone and squat in their apartment like a normal person.”

“It’s not that. I need to lure Daisy to this house I found in the middle of this forest for – ”

“You already know I’m not getting involved in that bullshit, Stoker. I do the books, I have to be neutral.”

“No, no; it’s not like that. I know what I’m doing, I just wanna do it there. This is about location, it shouldn’t affect the success.”

“Why?”

“You wanted to watch. This house is in the middle of nowhere and has a massive basement. You and as many of your freak friends as you want can hide out there without getting involved.”

“Hmm. I’ll think about it. If I have room in my schedule.”

“If I die, you can have my stash of stolen beer.”

“Okay, deal. What do you need me to do?”

\--------------------------

  
  


Martin picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this the Archivist?”

“Ah. You must be with the Church.”

“What do you want?”

“I think maybe I should be asking you that question. You’ve been watching us for weeks. Who are – I mean, I’d like to know who I’m speaking to.” Experiments had shown that Martin couldn’t Compel over the phone, but this man was unlikely to know that, and Martin didn’t want to come off as threatening if he didn’t have to.

“Richard.”

“I’m Martin.”

“Right. Why am I calling you?”

Martin could’ve given a smartarse reply, but decided to get to the point. “You’ve been watching our Institute for weeks. It’s getting really annoying. I don’t know what you could possibly want to know about us that would take weeks to figure out, but I thought if you had the opportunity to ask directly, it would save both of our people a lot of time.”

“You want to know what we want to know.”

“Pretty much.”

“Fine. We want to know when you plan to blight the whole world with the gaze of your voyeur.”

“I don’t know what – oh, you mean an apocalypse ritual. We’re not doing one.”

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously, we don’t want to end – ”

“Why kill Raynor then?”

“What?”

“You killed the Divine Host last year. Why?”

“I’ve been doing this job for less than six months, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re going to tell me that one of the police from the raid that killed him isn’t in and out of your Institute all the time, always hanging around you and the rest of your group? That she hasn’t been reporting to your Institute since before the raid?”

Basira. He must mean Basira. Martin didn’t know what raid he was talking about, but she wasn’t around to ask. He’d have to work with what he had.

“If you’ve had trouble with the police, that isn’t anything to do with us. But I can guarantee we’re not trying to end the world.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

Martin sighed. “Do you want access to our CCTV footage?”

“… What?”

“The Institute has external cameras to watch people come in and out. If you want to save your people the trouble of hanging around cafes and bus stops all day, I can text you the link to the feed. I don’t know how often security checks whose using it but you’ll be able to get some use out of it, at least.”

“… Why?”

“Because we got ambushed by meat monsters recently so I’m not comfortable with people just hanging around the Institute like this. If you want to watch, I sympathise, but I’d prefer not to have people physically crowding the Institute. Expect my text.” He hung up, then texted a link to the number that had called him.

About 3 minutes later, he got a text from Sasha: _Success! <3_

Martin expected that Richard would get access o the camera feed for a few days before IT noticed. That didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he’d downloaded the software to view the feed, and with it, a bit of malware cooked up by one of Sasha’s friends that allowed them to track his phone, as well as use the microphone and camera. That might come in handy, for learning about their ritual. Or for if they ever did have trouble with the People’s Church.

Part of Martin wanted to just go outside and ask one of them about the ritual, but he remembered how things like that had tended to work out for Jon, and how many enemies Gertrude had made. It was better not to start trouble unless they absolutely had to. Until they had a better idea of what was going on, just in general, it was best not to ruffle feathers.

Martin suspected that all the Beholding powers in the world wouldn’t give him a better idea of what was going on.

\--------------------------

  
  


Melanie climbed slowly to her feet, alone.

She was slow, probably because of the wound in her leg, and the drugs she still vaguely recognised as being in her system. They had made her sleep, but now, they were wearing off. In her hand was her knife; in this case, a long, partly rusted bayonet. Whenever she picked up a knife, it looked different, but it became her knife the moment her fingers curled around it.

She wasn’t thinking straight. The drugs, probably. Not blood loss; the cut on her leg was barely a scratch. She’d gotten her assailant off before he could cut too deep.

The bayonet had come from the rifle lying in the mud beside her. Clutched in the hands of a corpse in a military uniform she didn’t recognise. Had she killed him for it? Probably. She was on a battlefield; if she needed a weapon, killing an enemy for one was a logical choice. And she didn’t recognise the uniform, so he must have been an enemy.

She started walking. Before her, the battlefield stretched out, littered with more corpses. It was bigger than she’d pictured battlefields in her mind, when she had cause to visualise them. Sometimes she’d come across clusters of three or four bodies together; sometimes she’d walk for five or ten minutes without seeing a body. She wasn’t sure what felt lonelier; the periods of being alone, or the periods of being surrounded by the dead.

Because these had been people, once. Before she’d gotten to them. That was what must have happened, right? She was the only here, and they were dead, and it fit the pattern of her whole life. People got close to her and she tried to be nice, but it just wasn’t possible; she had to fight her way up, all the time, through the people in her way, and eventually, that was everyone. Everyone who got close to her she’d kill, attack, threaten, shout at, push away. It was best to push them away, so things didn’t escalate further. She was too dangerous, too toxic, to be around. She’d killed Martin! Martin had been the nicest person in the world and she’d read something given to her by Peter Fucking Lukas, of all people, and the rage had overtaken her and just like that…

And now she was alone. Of course she was; people would want to avoid her, and they’d be right to do so. Those that hadn’t, well, that was probably who all these corpses were. At least, alone, she was safe from everyone. And they were safe from her.

Melanie stumbled forward, into the quiet peace of the battlefield.

  
  



	74. Chapter 74

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie. :(

“Where’s Melanie?” Georgie demanded, storming into the archives and immediately screwing her face up at the faint scent of blood that still remained. Sasha and Mary looked up from their computers, startled.

“In hospital,” Sasha said, puzzled.

“No she fucking isn’t. There was some kind of disturbance in her room last night. When they went to check, the room was wrecked and she was gone. No way to get in or out, so some spooky shit must’ve gotten her.”

“Oh, shit,” Sasha said. “That’s not good.”

“No! It’s not! Meat guys here put her in hospital and then she vanishes from the hospital. Something very bad is going on here and we have to find her.”

Sasha went to exchange a glance with Mary, but the gesture might have been too subtle for Mary. Didn’t matter. Georgie thought that the Flesh had put Melanie in hospital? She didn’t know that she’d attacked Martin?

Probably best not to mention it for now. It could only complicate the issue.

“We should check it out. I’ll get Martin.”

“So,” Georgie said when Sasha and Martin had returned, “which of your fear entities can just steal someone out of their bed?”

“All of them, probably,” Martin said. “Different people have different… I mean, we know there are servants of the Spiral, Vast, or Lonely who could do it. Probably not Buried since she was nowhere near the ground floor, but she could’ve been trapped inside something for that one. Stranger, End or Dark, maybe, in theory, but I don’t know of any examples. Web could probably – ”

“Okay, okay; anyone could have done it and we have no leads and no witnesses. Can’t you use your spooky eye powers to find out what happened?”

Martin shook his head. “I can try, but it won’t work. All I can do so far is ask questions. Jon could see other stuff, but he’d been doing this for a lot longer than me. Without anyone to question…”

“Well we have to be able to do something!”

“We start by compiling a list,” Sasha said, “of possible suspects, then go through them one by one. It’s all we can do unless we get more information. Mary? To the database!”

“I’m helping,” Georgie said.

Martin shook his head. “You shouldn’t really be going through – ”

“I’m. Helping.”

\-------------------------------------

  
  


“Come on in, Miss… uh…”

“Call me Jude.” The woman in Basira’s doorway flashed her a bright smile and sauntered in. “You’re Basira Hussain, then?”

“That’s what it says on the door,” Basira said cautiously. There were plenty of Jude’s in the world, of course, but the way this woman leaned on the doorframe and left scorch marks behind gave Basira the distinct impression that she knew who this particular Jude was. It would take her one and a half seconds to be out the window behind her under normal circumstances, but she’d only just gotten her casts off; she shouldn’t even be in the office yet. There was no way she could get out before Jude could kill her.

But Jude just walked over and sat down, for all the world as if she wasn’t a superpowered serial killer who fed on the despair of others.

“How can I help you, Jude?”

“You can tell your pet murderous bitch to stop killing my friends.”

“Is this a threat?” Basira asked, not really sure how to proceed if the answer was ‘yes’.

But Jude just shook her head. “Not a threat, not a warning. I know what you must think of us, but I’m not an idiot. Killing you would be signing my own death warrant, wouldn’t it? I’m here to help.”

“Help.”

“The fucker your friend is after is getting my friends killed. He’s nothing but a nuisance. I know where he’s hiding out.” She grabbed a random letter off Basira’s desk without asking, snatched up a pen, and scrawled something down. “Time and place. He’ll be there. Let your friend know so she can take him out and leave the rest of us the hell alone.”

\---------------------

  
  


Martin handed out cups of tea and asked, again, the dreaded question. “So… what do we have?”

“Nothing,” Georgie said despondently. “Still nothing.”

“The closest we’ve got,” Sasha added, “is Simon Fairchild, maybe?”

“The mountain lift guy?”

“Yeah. He can throw people into the sky and stuff, and apparently he hung out with Mike Crew sometimes, who you had killed by Elias, so…”

“So maybe he took Melanie in revenge against me?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s… thin.”

“Yeah,” Sasha agreed. “Really thin.” She chewed her lip. “We have absolutely nothing.”

“And you still can’t…?” Georgie began.

“No, I can’t Know anything, let alone on demand! I can’t… Jon had these for a couple of years, okay? It takes time to sacrifice yourself to an ancient fear god in exchange for arcane powers that make you a toxic blight on the world, so I’m sorry if I’m not omniscient yet!”

Georgie raised her hands. “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean… that.”

“I know. You’re worried. I’m worried. I just… I’m going to go record a statement, I think.” He swept into his office. Ugh, why was he so useless?! His job was to know stuff and he couldn’t do it!By now, everyone had gotten hurt protecting him, some people multiple times, and he couldn’t even pay them back by doing the thing he was supposed to do! Melanie was lost or in trouble or dead because she’d been… well, trying to kill him. But that had been out of nowhere, and was probably related to the meat attack thing; who wouldn’t have a psychotic break after experiencing that kind of violence just to protect some useless, talentless hack who couldn’t do anything except wring his hands and make tea? Martin needed to get stronger, if he wanted to protect anyone. And he needed to calm down. He needed… he needed to record a statement. They always helped.

He pulled one out, and turned on the recorder.

\---------------------

  
  


“Did she buy it?”

“Of course she fucking did. I can’t believe you had me pretend to be scared of a cop. ‘Oooh, I won’t hurt you, because I don’t want your big bad friend to be mean to me…’ I sounded pathetic.”

“I’m sure you were very convincing. I’ve always thought you are an Oscar-worthy actress, Jude.”

“Shut the fuck up, Stoker.”

\---------------------

  
  


How long had it been?

Melanie… it would be wrong to say that she liked the battlefield. It was an unsettling place, and the idea of eventually dying here alone, having made no impact and with no one to miss her, was terrifying. What would be left of her? A string of painful relationships with people she’d driven away, and the occasional revival of a meme online, where people remembered the Ghost Freakout UK Girl under the false impression that that half-minute of footage was somehow _her_.

Melanie didn’t like the battlefield, but it was safe. It was the best place for her to be, where she couldn’t hurt anyone and no one could hurt her. Oh, and she’d been such a horrible person before, hadn’t she? Pushing thoughts like that away with more anger, blaming everything on everyone else. But there was only one person to be angry at, here. There was only one target for her ire; finally, the right target. Finally, she could be honest with herself.

Maybe that was why she was here. She was a servant of the Eye, right? Even if she was an unwilling one. Maybe she’d retreated here where she could avoid distractions and confront the truth about herself. That being kept away from everyone else was what she deserved. That a future without her was what they deserved. That was what was best for everyone.

Melanie was not cold, hungry or thirsty. While many of the clothes on the corpses were torn or bloodstained, the sheer number of them made it easy to scavenge as many outfits in her size and in good repair as she could want. They wore such an array of uniforms and carried so many different inds of weapons that it was impossible to even guess what army they’d been part of, but this also meant that she had access to pretty much any weapon she could use, and stocked up accordingly, just in case. They carried no personal effects she could use to identify them, not even dogtags, but many of their faces looked… vaguely familiar. She wasn’t sure if she recognised them, as individuals, or if all human faces were just starting to look alike, without a human inside.

As for food and water, they were also easy to access. Occasionally, Melanie would happen upon a bunker or trench or tent with rations, and eat her fill before moving on. She was never entirely sure if she was hungry, or how hungry she was; it was hard to keep time on the monotony of the battlefield and she’d long since learned to ignore what her own body told her. She was as much a danger to herself as anyone else, after all, so why try to stay connected if all she could do was hurt it?

She found a first aid kit, once, but by that time the scalpel wound on her leg had long since scarred over with angry, stubborn tissue, protecting what was inside from any thief. She left the kit behind.

How long had it been? The battlefield couldn’t be that big, surely. She had to reach the end of it at some point, so she’d been moving for… less time than it should take to cross a battlefield. Come to think of it, maybe she had reached the end, because she hadn’t seen a body for… some time. Just the rusted-out hulls of old tanks, the occasional trench or bunker, sometimes a camp with no people, corpses or personal effects. Just tents, linens and food, sitting in the desert or beach or mud. And that was a relief, really. It meant she couldn’t disgrace the dead with her robbery any more. And it meant that she didn’t have to look at their faces, be reminded of what they once were. She didn’t have to think of anything here as ‘they’.

When the corpses were left far behind, she started to feel safe enough to stop. Occasionally. She’d spend one or even two nights in the same tent, occasionally scrounge a notebook and start to mark the days, before deciding it was pointless and abandoning it. But once the tents started to be used, started to feel like a home for a person – her – they became unbearable. She’d spend a few hours erasing as many traces of her presence as possible, and move on.

Not that there was anywhere to go, really. Had she had a destination in mind, when she’d come here? She must have. She just needed to keep going until she found a landmark, or something. Something to tell her why she was where she was. Some kind of anchor.

Then everything would be okay.

  
  



	75. Chapter 75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the handful of commenters who predicted this can be happy.
> 
> Also, a delivery!

Martin, Sasha, Mary and Basira stared down at the innocuous cardboard delivery box sitting on the desk. It sat there, a normal-looking, innocuous box, addressed to Martin Blackwood, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute.

Martin broke the silence. “Do we know who signed for it?”

“Rosie, apparently,” Basira said.

“And it was definitely…?”

“From Breekon and Hope Deliveries, yes.”

They stared some more, until Sasha finally pulled out a stanley knife and cut the tape. Everyone else stood well out of the way, and Basira handed her a pair of gloves for actually opening the box.

They all peeked inside.

“That’s a Leitner,” Martin said.

“You think?” Basira asked. “Weird wrinkly leather book with some kind of ancient foreign writing all over it, covered in weird tiny bones? You think that might be a Leitner?”

Mary pulled the book out, brushing aside bones, and checked inside the front cover. “No bookplate.” She flipped through a few pages while everyone else tried not to look directly at, or touch, or breathe too close to, the book.

“What’s it about?” Sasha asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t read any of this. I think it’s in several different languages. The pages were all written and added at different times, so…”

“How can you tell?” Basira asked.

“Oh, from the skin.”

“… Skin?”

“Yes, it really has not been tanned properly! I think only the magic of the book is stopping it from rotting.”

“When you say ‘skin’…”

“These pages are made from human skin. Some of them are centuries old! Near the end they’re much fresher… oh, English!” She skimmed a page. Frowned, turned the page, skimmed another. “They’re descriptions of deaths. I think we have this book in the database. Statement by Mary somebody. I remember because of the name.”

“Mary Keay,” Martin said wearily. “That’s Mary Keay’s book. It’s safe to hold and read; give it here.”

Martin flicked though the book, careful not to read an entire page and accidentally summon anybody. It was basically what he’d expected; descriptions of deaths in various languages, scrawled with carious degrees of care on thick ‘paper’ that felt… not fresh, not rotten, but not tanned, either. What bothered him most was how badly some of the pages were bound, like the creators just didn’t know how to make books. Then he was bothered by the fact that that bothered him more than the pages being made of skin.

“Who would send this to us? And… _why_?”

“Should we take it to artefact storage?” Basira asked.

“No. No, it’s not dangerous enough to need to be contained, and if we… do need it for something, we should have it.”

“By it’s not dangerous, you meant the crazy murderwitch didn’t mention any dangers in her brief statement, right? Because I’m sure there’s a lot about this she didn’t mention.”

“Also,” Sasha put in, “the last thing Breekon and Hope sent us did try to kill us.”

“It’s, what, a Leitner connected to the End, right?” Basira asked.

“Yeah. At least, Mary Keay said it was,” Martin agreed. “Seems like a… well, a perversion of the End, to me, you know? I mean, it holds pieces of people, or memories of people or, or something, after they die. That’s the opposite of the End, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be afraid of not being here, for that?”

“It makes sense to me,” Mary said. “A lot of the statements in the database are like that. Lots of people cheating death, holding on as immortal shades, that kind of thing. So far as I can tell, you guys can’t decide whether you’re afraid of death, or not getting to have it. You seemed equally bothered by infinity and finity.”

“Good point,” Sasha said. “Grim, but good. Makes you wonder what future we’re actually striving for, if we’re afraid of both.”

“Humans are afraid of everything. If someone wanted to build and refine something to be a perfect producer of fear, they’d make a human.”

“We feel other things,” Martin said defensively.

“Most of which help your ability to feel fear, or at least don’t get in its way.”

“You’re biased, being a fear monster,” Basira said. “I’m sure if we had a manifestation of the expression of love here, they’d say the same thing about love.”

“Let me know if you meet one.”

Martin turned the book over in his hands. Where the hell had it come from?

And why?

\-----------------------------

  
  


“So I guess we’re all here to make a big fucking song and dance over whether you can take down a single cop, Stoker. Don’t most of these people have better things to be doing?”

“You’re the one who wanted to watch, Jude. I promised a place that could house an audience. Now get in the basement and keep quiet; Basira’s going to arrive to try to ‘protect’ Daisy from her own investigation soon enough and if she sees anyone this whole thing is blown.”

“Still don’t see how you’re so sure any of this will work. Sounds flimsy to me.”

“Because I’m a fucking genius. Also Arthur’s following her and texting me updates.”

“You’ve got someone on Basira, but who’s following the target to make sure she’s following your trail of breadcrumbs on time?”

“Nobody’s that fucking suicidal. But I know what I’m doing, Jude, because I’m smarter than you.”

“Well that’s just fucking bullshit.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why did so many people come to see my dazzling brilliance? You’re the one who said there was a big crowd.”

“I was exaggerating. There’s only sixteen people and most of them are just here to witness so nobody lies and cheats them in the betting pool.”

“Kerry didn’t bet on me.”

“Kerry hates Arthur and wants to make sure your little ember daddy doesn’t do the deed for you and give you credit.”

“What about Sean?”

“Sean wants to make sure Kerry doesn’t just kill you to make Arthur look bad.”

“Well, both of them are going to have to wait in the basement. As are you. Hope you brought a pack of cards.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something to do. Why do you have a fire axe?”

“I like axes. They seem to have become my signature weapon. If this goes south – ”

“You’re going to take them on with an _axe_? God you’re so weird. Just set them on fire like a normal person.”

“In this dry wooden house in the middle of a dry wooden forest? Real galaxy brain take there, Jude.”

“What the fuck is a galaxy – no, you know what, I don’t care. I really don’t fucking care. I hope she rips your spine out while she’s still alive. I lose money if she does, but it’ll be worth it.”He glanced at his phone. “Shit, they’re close! Everyone – ”

“I’m getting in the fucking basement, Jesus!” Jude threw up her hands and walked down. Clearly Tim wasn’t the only one being updated on Basira’s location, because a couple of other people glanced at their phones and waved their friends down with them.

The basement was a bit small for the size of the house, but all seventeen people, including Jude, fit inside. Tim eyed the cheap plasterboard walls that had been erected over the concrete and reminded Jude not to set the place alight. She flipped him off.

He closed the basement door, dragged an abandoned sofa over it, and got the hell out of the house. It was raining heavily, despite what he’d said to Jude about a ‘dry’ forest, and that was probably for the best – there would almost definitely be fire tonight. The moon was full, providing at least some light among the trees, so he was able to move quite quickly. Things were about to get super dangerous, and he didn’t want to be nearby.

He kept an eye on his phone, on updates from Arthur, as he walked. It was gonna be close, but… there. He was at a safe distance, and Basira and Arthur were still approaching.

He clicked the button on the remote detonator. And the explosives surrounding the cultists, hidden between the strong concrete exterior walls and the new flimsy plasterboard walls of the basement, exploded.

The children of the Lightless Flame could survive a lot of things, with enough luck and faith, but he doubted very much that any of them could have survived _that_.

The sound of the explosion reverberated through the forest. Tim stayed long enough to make sure that the surrounding forest wasn’t going to catch fire, then turned and almost walked into Arthur, who put a hand around his throat.

“What the fuck did you do?!” he snarled, as Tim’s skin began to blister. Basira appeared behind Arthur and kicked the back of his knee; his legs buckled and Tim was able to jerk out of his grip before the burning reached muscle.

“Isn’t it obvious? I took out about a third of your little congregation. Maybe a quarter? I could never really keep count.”

“Why? I believed in you!”

“Really? Well, that was a dumb decision. Sounds like a ‘you’ problem, though.”

“You were one of us! They were your brothers and sisters!”

“I thought so too, at first. You told me the thing growing in my heart was the blessing of the flame, and I believed you for awhile. But no. They weren’t my brothers and sisters; they were a pack of sadistic torturers and murderers of the innocent, and the world is better off without them. If it makes you feel better, that look on your face right now? Knowing you’ve lost everything, that some of your best friends are dead in there and that everyone will lay their lives firmly at your feet and there’s no way any of them will ever accept you again now? _Very_ Desolation. I bet your god’s eating well tonight.” 

Arthur took a step towards Tim, who backed away, raising his axe, while behind him, Basira cocked her gun.

“You’ll burn for this,” Arthur growled. “I’ll turn you to fucking ash.”

“You’ll wanna be quick,” Tim said, “because I hear footsteps.”

Just then, Daisy appeared. She looked Arthur up and down. “This the guy, then?”

“Daisy, Arthur Nolan, evil murderous fucker who tried to end the world awhile back. Arthur, meet Daisy Tonner, who left Harold how you found him.”

Terror briefly eclipsed the rage on Arthur’s face. Tim grinned, the moonlight glinting off his teeth and eyes in a predatory way.

“Yeah, Arthur,” he said. “You should probably run.”


	76. Chapter 76

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has fun with his friends in the forest.

Tim expected Arthur to use fire. They were in a forest, after all. But apparently he wasn’t a complete idiot – the forest was muddy and it was still raining, and the light and smell of smoke would give away his position. He was fast, though, especially considering his age, and hard to hear through the rain, which had become a torrent.

Tim tried to track him via the scant traces he left in his wake, but the rain washed them away immediately. Besides, Tim wasn’t a tracker. He knew that he was going in vaguely the right direction, that Arthur would be running for his car, but he wouldn’t know exactly where the man was unless…

There! A stumble, a gasp of pain. Tim zeroed in on the sound and charged through the trees.

Just in time to hear Daisy’s gunshot, and see Arthur collapse.

Tim dropped his axe and scowled. “He was mine!”

“You were too slow.” She holstered her gun. “I still can’t believe this worked. They honestly thought we were being manipulated? Basira’s real annoyed that your little cult thought she was this stupid.”

“They think everyone’s stupider than them, it’s kind of endearing.” Tim stepped closer to get a look at the body, but just then, Arthur rolled onto his back and threw an arm out towards him. Tim felt heat blossom over his shoulder, singing his hair, the sudden temperature increase causing the burns on his throat to scream in pain. Then Arthur was up and running again.

Tim looked at Daisy hopefully.

“I’ll give you a head start,” she allowed. “Because you’re new.”

And with a dopey grin that wouldn’t be out of place on a labrador, Tim picked up his axe and loped off between the trees.

\------------------------

  
  


Martin had always hated the giant portrait of Jonah Magnus in the reception area, but today in particular it felt like the man’s piercing hazel eyes were boring directly into his bag.

To be fair, everyone seemed to be staring at his bag as he left for the day with Mary, like they knew he’d lied about locking the Leitner in his desk and was smuggling it home to look at alone. But he had to know why it had been sent to him. So much was going on and everyone kept relying on him and he never knew anything, and _it was his whole job to know things_. He couldn’t find Melanie, he couldn’t determine what apocalypse rituals were coming up… he had to make progress somewhere, find something. Do something.

So he would study this book. He knew it was on the safe end of the Leitner danger spectrum, so much as any Leitner could be considered safe. Well… he knew it wasn’t dangerous so long as he didn’t start skinning people and tying their skin in the book or anything. He didn’t even know how to bind ghosts, nor did he have any intention of ever trying. And there was so much knowledge in there, so much more than the pages themselves could hold… information that _he_ could find. That would be useful, that would be best for everyone.

So he took it home.

Mary had recently been trying to decide what music she should like, so Martin waited until Abba’s Greatest Hits started blasting from her room before opening the book again. Most of the pages were in languages he didn’t speak. He flipped through until he found one in English and read quietly.

“As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he’d gone too far. His captor hit him again, and again, and again, no longer seeming to care if he was capable of answering his questions. Through the pain, all he could wonder was whether he’d know which blow would be the final, decisive blow, whether there’d be some monumental hit that was just too far, after which he’d know he was done for, the point of no return. But aside from the increasing pain, every hit felt identical.

“And so Leopold Montgomery ended.”

Martin looked up. The man before him obviously wasn’t actually there, not in a full, physical sense, but he was distinct enough to see clearly as he glared at Martin and said, “I’m still not saying anything. Wait, where am I?”

“London. Who are you? What do you last remember?”

“None of your business. Why am I here?”

Didn’t answer the question. Interesting. Could Martin not compel a ghost? Maybe. Or maybe he just wasn’t strong enough yet.

“Honestly,” Martin said, “I’m trying to figure out the same thing.” He held up the book. “Do you know what this is?”

“I don’t know anything about your cursed artefacts.”

“I’m not… look. This isn’t an interrogation. Somebody sent me this book. I don’t know who or why. I’m trying to figure it out and I just want to know if you’re aware of your… situation.”

“That I’m dead.”

“Well. Yeah.”

Leopold nodded. “I did notice that.”

“Right.” There was an awkward pause. “What’s it like?”

“Not great. Wouldn’t recommend trying it. Of course, I can’t know properly while I’m still in this thing, can I? Can’t go to heaven while your cursed toy has me trapped.”

“Do you want to? Do you want me to… let you out?” Martin swallowed. “Destroy your page?”

“Please.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. It’s… wrong, to be like this. It’s like being slowly ripped in half by two forces that shouldn’t exist, but knowing that they’ll never actually succeed in pulling you apart, it’s like… it’s like a horrible infection on the universe, but you don’t have the infection, you are it. It’s awful, being something that was never meant to exist in God’s earth, so was never designed to have a tolerable existence. I just want to go.”

“Right. I’ll do that, then. Is there anything else you need done, any final requests, or whatever? I can’t promise anything, but – ”

“No. I had… my family are gone, now. My cat would have to be dead by now. There’s nothing left that I need to do. God, that’s depressing, isn’t it? This I the last piece of me, and I know I’ll see them in heaven, but just thinking that my influence here is over, that no one will even know my story or think about me ever again… well, that’s just pride talking, isn’t it.”

“I can, if you want.”

“What?”

“You can tell me your story. I’m a very good listener.”

“Ha. You know what? Fine. If it’s the last thing I’m going to do. You ready?”

Martin picked up his tea. “Yes.”

So Leopold told him about his life. About the years in the steel mill, meeting his wife and having a daughter, losing that daughter and shortly after his job and turning to mob work. About the weirdos trafficking artefacts that people said were cursed, about them trying to muscle in on his gang’s territory and Leopold being grabbed for information and refusing to talk. About finally dying, only to wake up in the book, but his wife had moved on and his daughter was dead and with him already dead they had nothing left to threaten him with.

And Martin, of course, drank in every word.

He dismissed Leopold, carefully cut his page out of the book, and lit a candle to burn the old, dry skin over. Trying not to think about how ‘evil horror movie witch’ the whole thing looked, he brought the page closer to the flame.

Then hesitated.

What if he needed to know more? What if Leopold knew something important? He wouldn’t tell him, probably, if Martin broke his promise like this, but… but information didn’t stop existing just because it wasn’t accessible. Destroying it like this was…

Martin put the page down, and immediately felt better.

He knew what this was, of course. This was why Elias had hidden incriminating evidence instead of destroying it, why he’d seen Jon nervously hide away reports he shouldn’t have in drawers, and probably why (according to Sasha at least) the Institute’s library was terribly curated. This was the Beholding, lying to him. Changing him. Telling him that the concept of whatever he hadn’t yet witnessed in that page was somehow more important than ending Leopold’s suffering and giving him control over his own fate.

He knew that, in the same way that he knew he couldn’t quit. That didn’t mean he could do anything about it.

He was pretty sure he could bring himself to destroy the page. Eventually. When he was a bit stronger. But… Leopold’s story had been emotionally taxing, and it had been a long day, and it was so hard to summon up the will…

Tomorrow. He’d destroy it tomorrow.

Martin blew out the candle and went to bed.

\-----------------------

  
  


“Knock, knock.” Basira neglected to actually knock, or indeed wait for a reply, before walking into Tim’s ‘home’ in an isolated corner of the Millbank tunnel system. She eyed the head of Arthur Nolan, sitting on a little shelf above his bed, with distaste. “You’re keeping that?”

“Yeah! Trophy!”

“Is it… dead?”

“I think so? It’s not moving. It does feel like it’s looking at me sometimes, but I got a blindfold for it, just in case. Anyway, I’m used to that.”

“Yes, I know the feeling. So you’re going to tell them now? You’ve had me lying about you for a whole week, but there’s no excuses now, right?”

“You didn’t have to lie. You just had to not tell them you’d found out I was alive.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s so much better. I feel really great about that.”

“If they’d known, they might have gotten involved, and the cult – ”

“I know. But it’s over now, right? So there’s no more need for secrecy.”

“Yeah. I’ll… go tell them.”

“Great. Let’s go. We’ll stop for breakfast and go in together when the Institute opens.”

“Does it have to be right now?”

“Yeah. It does.”

“But I have to – ”

“Whatever you’ve got on can wait. This can’t. Come on.”

So at 9:05am, Basira dragged a  dishevelled Timothy Stoker through the front door of the Magnus Institute and up to the front desk. Tim fixed Rosie with a lopsided smile. Her eyes widened.

“Timothy! You’re… you…”

“Not here to work, Rosie. Just passing through. I need to get down to the archives. I, uh… I want to make a statement.”


	77. Chapter 77

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha is not okay with this.

Tim entered the archives several steps ahead of Basira, which he only realised was a mistake when something heavy slammed down on his head and knocked him to the floor. He heard Sasha yell “Mary!” and, before he could get his bearings, he was picked up and pushed over a desk, arms held at his back at an uncomfortable angle so he couldn’t move without severe pain.

“What the hell – ”

“Don’t move,” Mary said.

“Is he…?” Sasha began.

“Fear feels pretty human. Isn’t doing anything dangerous. Probably safe enough to get Martin.”

Basira entered, but didn’t seem inclined to help him as Sasha fetched Martin. Martin paled at the sight of him. “Who are you?”

“I’m Tim. Timothy Stoker. Who the hell else would I be? Are you alright?”

“Are you the same Timothy Stoker I’ve known for years, who used to work here?”

“Yes! I mean, as much as you’re the same Martin. Everyone changes. What’s – ?”

“Do you mean anyone in this room any harm?”

“No!”

Mary let him up. Tim rubbed his shoulders, wincing. “Was hoping for a happier reunion, but – ”

Sasha punched him in the stomach.

“You arsehole!” she screamed. “We all thought you were dead! You just fucking disappeared, no word, no – we mourned you, and you couldn’t even be fucking bothered to tell us you were alive!”

“It’s not like that!” Tim gasped.

“Oh, isn’t it? Is it not fucking like that? Well then what is it like, Tim?!”

“Okay, it is like that. But I… I’m sorry, okay? I had my reasons, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just… look, I can explain.”

“Please. Fucking. Do.”

“Not to you. To him.” He nodded at Martin. “I came to make a statement.”

“I don’t take live statements,” Martin said. “There are consequences.”

“Basira already told me about the dreams.”

Everyone turned to look at Basira.

“You _knew_?” Sasha asked.

“No!” Basira said. “I mean, not until this week. He came to me and Daisy, said he needed our help to take down a bunch of cultists, swore me to secrecy for the week so it wouldn’t jeopardise the plan and get him killed. That’s all.”

“I didn’t exactly mean to disappear,” Tim said. “I just kind of… kept putting off making contact. It was nice to not feel like I was being watched for once. And then I was in way too deep with the Cult of the Lightess Flame, and – ”

“You were with the Desolation cult?!” Sasha asked.

“Oh, yeah. I – ”

“Hang on,” Martin said. “I should leave the room before this turns into a statement. Everyone will have to fill me in later.”

“Martin, the whole reason I’m here is to – ”

“I’m not condemning you to a life of horrible nightmares over this.”

Tim cocked a grin. “You’re not curious?”

Martin crossed his arms. “That’s not fair.”

“I know. Just a joke. Martin, can we talk about this alone?”

“No,” all three women said. They looked defensive.

Tim stared in surprise. “You think I’m going to hurt him?”

“No,” Basira said, “but we can’t be too careful.”

“He did his spook question thing on me. I said I wouldn’t.”

“You might be some kind of shapeshifter here to attack him, who’s immune to compulsion,” Sasha said. “We’re not certain it works on everything.”

“Or you might be Tim, but might become dangerous at any moment,” Mary added. “Like Melanie.”

“Like… what’s been happening while I’ve been gone?”

“A lot,” Sasha said shortly. “Also, just so you know, you look and smell terrible.”

“I spent a lot of last night running through the pouring rain in a forest,” Tim admitted.

“And didn’t shower when you got home?”

“Don’t have one. I’m living in a tunnel right now. It’s alright.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Look,” Tim said. “I’m not coming back here. I’m not. But I should have told you I was alive right away, instead of… especially since we lost Jon. I’m sorry. Hate me if you want, but I’m here now.”

“To give a statement and leave.”

“Yeah. Basira’s found some kind of group in New Zealand that might be trying to end the world. Daisy and I are going to go check it out in a couple of weeks, and it’s going to be really dangerous.”

“Oh, so you came here to tell us surprise, you’re alive, but I might not be soon and you won’t know again,” Sasha snapped. “Real thoughtful.”

“From now on, you’ll know when I die.” He looked at Martin. “At least, he will.”

Martin looked puzzled. Then his eyes widened. “You want to use the nightmares as a communication system?”

“The nightmares are what told me when Jon needed help, when he got kidnapped,” Basira pointed out. “Daisy and Tim might be out of conventional communication for awhile, but if Tim and Martin can see each other…”

“All for the low, low price of a lifetime of nightmares,” Martin pointed out.

“I already get nightmares,” Tim said. “And so do you. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine, I’ll think of something else. But if you’re trying to protect _me_ , don’t. I want to do this, Martin.”

Martin hesitated, but eventually shrugged. “Fine.”

“I’m coming,” Mary said. “Just in case.”

Tim couldn’t help but notice that apparently _he_ was a potential danger, but the _literal manifestation of fear_ in the room was totally fine. He tried not to look too visibly annoyed by that. He didn’t know what the archive crew had been through since the Unknowing, and he didn’t think starting shit with Mary right now would earn him many friends.

So everyone crowded into Martin’s office. Tim sat down and make awkward small talk while Martin went to make tea. Then he sat down across from Tim, turned a tape recorder on, and asked him, calmly, for his story.

So Tim told him.

He started with stumbling out of the Unknowing, injured, dazed and confused. Not wanting to go back to the Institute and subject himself to the gaze of the Watcher right away, not ready for that, he booked a hotel room and, the net morning, was approached by Arthur.

He talked about the cult, about waiting until the day he’d start to get sick and have to drag himself back to the Institute, but how the sickness never came. About the freedom afforded by the Lightless Flame, about his adventures carefully vetting victims to make sure he was removing the worst of society and improving the world, and Arthur’s concerns that his motivations were wrong, and that he was going to die if he didn’t sort himself out. About a long conversation he’d had with Arthur about Tim’s habit of always killing his victims when he was done with the drawn-out takedown, instead of ever leaving them to suffer and feed the Desolation as they withered away. About the day he’d stopped being able to set anything alight as, he suspected, the last bit of influence from what Jude had called his ‘three minutes of divinity’ had finally worn off. The rest of the congregation had assured him that instability was normal, that beginners could never do it all the time; that he just needed to get his head right, to serve properly, and that it would come back. That he’d know he was on the right track when it came back.

He’d started using a cigarette lighter and lighter fluid. With habits formed operating under the Ceaseless Watcher, it was easy to be subtle. None of them ever noticed him using it.

He talked about having Daisy on his tail, about trying to lose her by framing Harold; about how it hadn’t worked but it had gotten rid of Harold and made the world a better place, which gave him an idea. About approaching Daisy, explaining the situation, proposing a plan. About Daisy roping Basira in to be ‘tricked’ by Jude, so they could get as many cultists as possible into that basement that Daisy had rigged with explosives they’d covered in drywall.

“So,” Tim finished, “that’s about it. Statement ends I guess. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Basira said. “How are you free of this place?”

“I’m… not entirely sure, actually? At first I thought maybe the Lightless Flame had a greater claim over me, but I’m definitely not one of them, so…”

“You’re something,” Mary said. “You’ve tangled fear around you in a… stable way. Like they do.”

Tim nodded, unsurprised. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really understand the taxonomy you guys use, I don’t know where the borders between your fears are or which aspects you think are more important for drawing them. It’s something that isn’t vulnerable to me; that’s all I know.”

“But I’m becoming some kind of spook? Like Martin?”

“Hey!”

Mary just shrugged. “I don’t really know what that means. I can’t tell if you’re bound to anything, like Martin is to this place; I don’t have any special knowledge or senses for that kind of thing. Elias might know. All I can tell you is that your fear is very different to how it used to be.”

“Unsettling to know,” Tim remarked, still not surprised.

“So that’s how we can get free?” Basira asked. “Just tangle ourselves up in a different fear?”

Mary shook her head. “If that worked, Melanie wouldn’t be trapped.”

“Wait, Melanie is tangled up with one of these things?!” Sasha asked. Then she thought for a minute. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense.”

“She did rip apart four attacking flesh monsters,” Basira pointed out.

“And put a butter knife through my arm,” Martin added.

“She what? What the hell did I miss?!”

“While you were off blowing up cultists, we were keeping busy, too,” Sasha said primly.

“Is that why this place stinks of blood?”

“Does it? Dammit, I thought we’d finally gotten rid of that smell.”

“I think we just got used to it,” Basira shrugged. “This place isn’t very well ventilated, and it’d probably be easier to just replace a lot of the pipes than get that stuff out of them.”

“What the _fuck_ happened here?!”

“Drinks,” Sasha snapped. “Not here. You and I and whoever else wants to come are going out, and I am going to get extremely fucking drunk, and we are going to catch up properly, _you arsehole_.”

“Okay, I – ”

“And you’re buying.”

“Why am I – ?”

“Because you let us believe you were dead!”

“Right. Right. Yeah. I’m buying.”


	78. Chapter 78

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Archives make some deductions.

Martin lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling, ignoring the sound of Shania Twain blasting from Mary’s room.

Tim.

Tim was _alive_.

Tim was alive, and Jon wasn’t.

Martin wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that. Or it might be more accurate to say that he felt lots of things about that. Guilt, mostly. Tim had been alive this whole time and they’d gave up on him. Now Melanie was missing; was she alive? How long until they gave up on her? Now Tim was leaving again, and he’d specifically subjected himself to nightmares so that he and Martin could keep tabs on each other – he was being nice about it, but did he not trust them not to give up on him again? That must be why. Martin couldn’t blame him.

It was probably a good thing that his assistants were immune to the nightmares, or they’d all want nightmare ties. For a moment, Martin worried about what would happen if he went to sleep and _didn’t_ see Tim. Maybe Tim was still tied to the Institute and hadn’t gotten sick for some other reason, in which case this would be a pretty bad way to find out about it. He supposed they’d know for sure once the two of them fell asleep (which could take a long time, if Tim was drinking with Sasha). But it really did seem like Tim was free, meaning that Martin would have some new fire-based nightmares to enjoy tonight. The Unknowing, at the very least. Fun.

He hadn’t told Tim, but so far as injuries went, Martin wasn’t really a fan of burns.

Had Tim’s new allegiance to whatever was inside him (Hunt, surely? Dangerous to draw conclusions, but most likely Hunt) severed him from the Eye, in the same way that Martin seemed to have been stolen from the spider? Martin didn’t think it was likely; surely Tim was more like Melanie than like Martin, who’d actually signed a contract. Right? And Melanie most definitely hadn’t been free. She’d attacked Martin over it, after accusing him of…

Hmm.

Martin knocked on Mary’s door loudly enough to be heard over It’s Raining Men (Hallelujah) and was promptly answered. “I want to talk to everyone,” he said. “Are you happy to come out and meet the others?”

“Of course! It’ll be fun!”

“Hopefully. Can you find out where Sasha and Tim are while I call Basira?”

Twenty minutes later the archive crew, Tim, and Daisy (whom Basira had brought) were crowded around a small table in a somewhat noisy bar. Martin didn’t waste any time.

“When Melanie attacked me, she accused me of killing Jon,” he said.

“You weren’t to blame for any of that,” Sasha said immediately. “She wasn’t in her right – ”

Martin waved her protest down. “I know, I know. That’s not what this is about. But it’s what she thought. She thought I’d worked with Elias to put him in prison, out of her reach, and killed Jon, and accused me of ‘trapping us here’. Then she said she mightn’t be able to kill Elias, but there was another way out, and attacked me.”

Everyone was silent.

“Holy shit,” Sasha said. “Tim…”

“The timing doesn’t work out,” Basira said. “Jon dies a couple of weeks after the Unknowing. Tim should’ve gotten sick by then.”

“I was on leave,” Tim said. “It’s planned a kayaking trip before all this happened. My leave was up very shortly before he passed away, too soon for symptoms.”

More silence.

“Well,” Basira said, “this is… good information to have.”

Martin nodded. “If we ever – ”

“No,” Sasha said.

“What?”

“You’re going to say something about how if our backs are ever really against the wall, we can save everyone except one person. Or you’re about to give some stupid apology for something that’s not remotely your fault. Don’t. We’re in this together and this changes nothing. If you even _think_ of taking more risks, treating yourself as more expendable after this, I will lock you in a panic room with Mary and give her every self-care book ever written, and that is a promise.”

“We don’t even know anyone with a panic room.”

“ _You_ don’t know anyone with a panic room.”

“I knew it!” Tim exclaimed. “Sasha’s some kind of superspy with a secret spy panic room!”

“Why would a superspy have – ? Whatever. I just want to be very clear here. Elias trapped us. Peter was probably in on it too. You didn’t, and you’re not a barrier to our freedom or anything.”

“I mean, I quite literally am.”

“Not really,” Basira said. “I don’t mind working for the Institute part-time. The statements and library access is actually really useful; my private investigator business has gotten a bit of a reputation for taking weird cases and that information really helps. Mary’s not trapped, so until we find Melanie this is only really a problem for you and Sasha.”

“And I’m not leaving,” Sasha said. “Even if something happens to you, Martin, I intend to stay with the Institute.”

“What? Why?”

“Same reason you became the Archivist. Somebody has to. If we all leave, some other group will be roped in, and they’d have to learn all over again, and until we’re sure nobody else is trying to end the world we can’t afford to waste that kind of time. They’d need me there to be the Archivist, or at least be able to train and advise a new clueless Archivist. If something happens to you, I’m still here and my job is harder and more dangerous. In fact, if you hadn’t taken this job, I would have, and my position would already be worse. I just want to make sure you remember that before you go into one of your guilt spirals.”

“I don’t go into guilt spirals!”

“Yes you do,” Basira said.

“Fine,” Martin groused. “I’ll try not to feel guilty about being the thing trapping – ”

“You’re already doing it. Give me a reason to think you might do something stupid or risky with your life and I will call my panic room friend.”

“Fine, _fine_ , I get your point.”

“I think you’re all missing the more important point here,” Daisy cut in.

Basira frowned at her. “There’s a more important point than learning about the supernatural tether binding us in service to an ancient fear god?”

“Yeah. The last person who found out about it tried to kill Martin. So, how did she find out about it?”

That was a really good question.

“We should try to find out if she’d spoken to Elias at all,” Martin said.

“Elias?” Tim asked. “She hates Elias. What’s he got to do with anything?”

So Martin explained his ‘Elias is trying to kill Jon’ theory, remembering to point out that Elias did kill Gertrude, and they only had his word that she was trying to destroy the archive at the time.

“Why, though?” Tim asked. “He appointed Jon and you as head archivists. Why would he do that if he wanted to kill you?”

“Sacrifices, would be my guess,” Basira said.

“What?”

“Well, the Eye. It’s about the fear of being watched, being judged, having your secrets revealed, right? But it’s also the opposite. It’s got the fear of seeing and knowing terrible things in there, too.”

“Yeah, that always puzzled me,” Sasha said, frowning. “Just because it’s about information, I don’t see why they’re the same fear?”

“It makes sense that they’re the same to me,” Martin said. “I mean, a lot of the fear of being witnessed can also be the fear of self-knowledge, right? Besides, the End is about finality but some of its manifestations are about infinity, and if it can be two sides of the same coin – ”

“By that logic, though, the Buried and the Vast should be two sides of the same coin,” Tim said, “and that just throws the whole taxonomy – ”

“No, I think they’re different,” said Sasha. “They might be opposites in many ways in theme, but not spirit. I don’t think the pressure of crushing confinement and the innavigable space of the vast are two sides of – ”

“ _My point is_ ,” Basira cut in before the discussion could get entirely out of control, “that that’s what the Archivist basically is, right? Someone who takes in these awful stories and causes nightmares about them. So to outsiders, yeah, that’s the fear of being watched, but the Archivist themself is experiencing the other side. So what if that’s the point? You designate someone, fill them up with terrible knowledge, and then kill them in the temple for… power, or whatever. Gertrude was killed in the Institute. Jon was buried in, or at least right under, the Institute. Melanie and the meat people came for Martin in the Institute.”

“But Gertrude was the Archivist for fifty years,” Martin pointed out. “Would she have lived that long if she was a sacrifice?”

Mary spoke up. “Gertrude wasn’t a very good Archivist. At least, that’s what they say. She was a scary person, who managed to disrupt a lot of plans, but she had trouble actually developing her power.”

“Or was smart enough not to,” Basira muttered.

“Still though. Waiting fifty years to sacrifice her and going for me after one? Doesn’t sound likely.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Basira said. “Still, something to keep in mind. Maybe fifty years was too long to wait, and Elias is desperate. Jon died well outside the Institute, so he might not have counted.” She shrugged. “We don’t really know enough to say anything definite, but…”

“But we know enough to take some precautions,” Sasha said. “From now on, Martin should spend as little time in the Institute as possible. Just in case.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Martin asked.

“No,” Sasha said.

“If you disagree, you’ll be outvoted,” Mary added, to which Basira nodded.

Tim skulled his beer. “I’ll be glad to get to New Zealand and get away from all this drama.”

“Aren’t you hunting apocalypse cultists?” Martin asked.

“Yeah. Way less dramatic.”

“How are you paying for that?” Sasha asked. “You don’t look… financially secure, right now.”

“I’m hiring him and Daisy as independent contractors for our apocalypse-destroying efforts,” Basira explained. “Claiming their tickets and lodging as expenses.”

“Will that work?”

“You know, I don’t think Peter actually reads the expense claims before he approves them? For a rich guy he’s terrible at money.”

“Or maybe he just likes to waste Elias’.”

“So we’re on the same page,” Tim said. “I’m telling you, Basira, you should spring for first class tickets. We can bankrupt the Institute through petty luxuries and they won’t be able to afford to kill Martin.”

“I’m not killing this golden goose, Tim. The longer we only claim reasonable stuff, the less likely he is to look too closely.”

“You’re no fun.”

“For the length of this trip, I’m your boss.”

“Being the boss means nothing to these people,” Martin said gloomily. “Nothing.”

“Damn straight it doesn’t, boss,” Sasha said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You want a beer? Tim’s paying.”


	79. Chapter 79

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone does their jobs. Except Melanie, who is alone.

Melanie woke up with the sun, such as it was in her new world, and took an hour or so to erase all signs that she’d spent any time in the green canvas tent. There was no one to hurt here, but this world didn’t deserve her toxic touch any more than that other place full of people had. If she was careful not to leave a mark, it wouldn’t get a chance to reject her, and she could spare everyone some pain and trouble.

She wasn’t alone. A man stood in the mouth of the tent, blocking the sunlight. A man she knew, or did she? Maybe it was just the sight of another human face; maybe any face would be familiar… no; she knew him. They’d been in hospital and something had happened, and she’d attacked him, the very last person she’d had to drive away. And now he was here?! She’d attacked him! She’d driven him away! She’d acted, and he was here, and that shouldn’t happen! How dare he?!

With a snarl, Melanie was on her feet, machete in hand, charging forward. The man stepped sideways, putting the fabric of the tent between them; she slashed at it as she bolted out of the tent but… he was gone.

She was alone again.

Everyone was safe again.

She could relax.

\--------------------------

  
  


For the first time in a long time, Sasha felt sympathy for Elias Bouchard.

Sure, he was an evil arsehole. But she’d just spent four hours going through the phone data of Richard Sanderson, Local Spooky Cult Leader, and was developing a keep appreciation for how much mundane garbage Elias must have to filter through to find anything remotely useful. She was sitting in Martin’s office (Martin was only coming in one randomly-determined day a week for his own safety, at Basira’s insistence), staring at the Weird Conspiracy Map that he still insisted on using to track things even though her carefully constructed electronic database was _perfectly fine_. ‘I just like to see things laid out, Sasha, even if I don’t have spider intuition any more’. _Does your conspiracy wall have a search function, Martin?? No, it doesn’t!_

Sasha knew what dry cleaner Richard sent his suits to. She knew what he got on his occasional takeout pizzas. She knew when a couple of meetings, that may or may not have been Divine Host meetings, had taken place. She knew _nothing_ of use.

She wondered how Tim and Daisy were doing on their own little cult investigation mission. She knew that Tim was alive, because he was still appearing in Martin’s dreams, but the pair had gone mostly dark. Basira didn’t seem worried, so Sasha supposed she shouldn’t be worried either. Anyway, Tim had blown up a building with himself still inside it, and survived. And then taken down a bunch of Desolation cultists.

He was fine. He’d be fine.

She was supposed to be focusing on the Divine Host.

Speaking of which, it was about time for one of Richard’s meetings that may or may not be a church thing to start. She made his phone call her, started recording that call, and sat back to listen to a bunch more mundane drama in the hopes of picking out something important.

She was just in time to hear half a conversation between Richard and another church member she’d heard him speak to occasionally, Greg.

“We have the camera footage, but the Archivist is still avoiding the building,” Richard was explaining. “We’ve got eyes on him, but why is he avoiding the building? He’s been doing it ever since that sabateur visited them, and we haven’t seen him since, either. What do the Washington chapter think?”

“They’re still broken after the ritual. Only six survivors, and two of them have lost faith. Nobody’s coordinated enough yet.”

“Well, the Watcher’s going to make a move soon. Has anyone checked in with Manuela?”

“We can’t risk bringing their attention to – ”

“Right, right. I just wish we had her advice. She’d know how to blind the Eye.”

“A direct attack? Whatever they’re doing, we could disrupt it.”

“We don’t have the strength. And we don’t know how dangerous their Archivist is. Without Raynor or Manuela to shield us, he might see us coming. No, we… we need to recover our strength for now. And hope we have time. Come on, the ceremony’s about to start.”

Sasha left the ceremony recording, just in case something important happened, but put the phone down. She didn’t like the way they chanted; their cadence gave her the creeps.

Well, if she were in a movie, she wouldn’t have had to spend literal weeks listening in on garbage to get something, but the important thing was that she finally did have something. The cult’s continued suspicion of them was… not great. Sasha wanted peace with the cult, but they were going to have to do something before the People’s Church panicked and kidnapped Martin.

As for the rest, well. Talking about people losing faith after ‘the ritual failed’ was… not confirmation of a failed apocalypse, not something she wanted to read too much into, but promising. And she’d definitely heard the name ‘Manuela’ in conjunction with the Dark before. Which would be very easy to track down, in her well-constructed database with excellent searching and cross-referencing capabilities.

So much more useful than a stupid pinboard covered in notecards and red string.

\----------------------

  
  


One advantage of working from home, Martin reflected, was that strangely enough, Mary was around _less_.

He liked Mary just fine, but he’d been worried that after the recent attacks she’d double down on her self-appointed role as his bodyguard and never let him out of her sight. This, as it turned out, hadn’t been a problem. Mary seemed to have decided that her job involved protecting him to, from and at work, and being around to protect him at home, so if he went anywhere else it wasn’t her problem. Meaning he could go to cafes and soforth as much as he liked without having to fend off a cheerful, overprotective monster. Martin wasn’t sure he entirely understood this logic, but didn’t want to question it in case she changed her mind.

So it was just him and the ghost of Eileen Marckle loitering behind a storage shed at the edge of a playground.

“Ooh, look!” Eileen cooed. “There she is, she looks so happy… two kids! Martin, I have two grandchildren – they’re adorable!”

“I’m very happy for you,” Martin said, trying to sound sincere and not like he was worried that someone would notice a childless man hiding out near a playground with a ghost or, perhaps more worryingly, without noticing the ghost.

“Oh, that stuffed rabbit! That’s Manny Rabbit, that was mine when I was young… oh, they’re so beautiful.” Eileen stood back and wiped virtual tears from her eyes. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. That’s all I wanted. To see her one last time, to see how she was doing. I’m ready to go now. Thank you, Martin.”

“Rest well, Eileen. I dismiss you.”

Once Eileen was gone, Martin put the skin page carefully in his jacket pocket and left. This had become a pattern for him, now that he was out of the office all the time and had so much time on his hands – every few days he’d summon someone from the book, hear their story, fulfil any last requests that were reasonable and he had the means to do, and offer them permanent destruction, if they wanted it. Eileen was the sixth he’d summoned, and the fifth to ask to be burned.

She’d be the fifth page added to the little pile that he couldn’t quite yet summon the energy to burn. A growing debt, that was only going to grow greater, if he didn’t start dealing with it.

He knew the book ghosts weren’t people, not really. They seemed to have all the knowledge and awareness of the people they were copied from, or at least enough of it that they were about the same to talk to except for the rather muted sense of emotion, but the information they gave was less… rich, less complex… than the statements he’d taken from Eleanor or Tim. A fair bit moreso than written statements, of course. He knew they weren’t real people, or at least weren’t the humans they were copied from, but that didn’t matter. After all, Mary wasn’t a real person, either, and there was no question that her rights, her safety, her emotions were important. Nobody sat around debating whether she really had emotions and wants that needed to be respected, because it was accepted that they were real to her. Same with the ghosts. He owed them the release they wanted.

And someday very soon, he’d start giving it to them.

\--------------------------

  
  


“I’m starting to think it’s just an everyday apocalypse cult, Daisy,” Tim said, trudging into their room at the hostel and tossing his binoculars onto his bed. “Y’know, a normal people one.”

Daisy cursed quietly. “So this is a waste of time, then. Ah well. Bad luck, I guess.”

“I’m not sure someone not ending the world is bad – ”

“Seems like someone’s always trying to end the world, or do something bad to it. It’s bad luck that we’re here, instead of stopping them, when people could be getting hurt elsewhere. We’ll double-check tomorrow, then head back. I don’t like leaving Basira unguarded like this.”

“You think she’s in danger?”

“When the rest of your little cult see the spot that house used to be, it’ll be very obvious it was a trap. They’ll probably want revenge.”

“Oh. I didn’t realise – I didn’t mean to put you two in danger…”

Daisy waved his words away. “We knew what we were getting into. When we get back to England, we can deal with the rest. She can take care of herself until then, I’m sure.” She lay back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, conversation apparently over.

Tim headed into their little bathroom to clean up. He’d made a conscious decision not to make any stupid jokes about them sharing a room on this adventure because he didn’t want his jawbone removed by a terrifying murderer with a stricter sense of ‘funny’ than his own. Working with Daisy was great; she was very skilled, very focused, seemed to know exactly what to do at any time. There was just the slight problem of all the time that they weren’t working, which was… well.

He was scared of Daisy, alright? Nothing wrong with admitting that. It was just sensible. He was pretty sure that the only person who wasn’t scared of Daisy was Basira. Maybe, when they could be reunited and didn’t have to worry about each other any more, everyone could be a little less scared of Daisy.

God, he couldn’t wait to get home.


	80. Chapter 80

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Melanie.

The thing about being alone, Melanie reflected as she climbed a hill, was that it was kind of like being dead.

She wasn’t suicidal or anything. She wanted to live. It was just… a person’s life was marked and measured by their impact on other people, so to be someone who would never impact another person again was just… waiting down the clock. Everything seemed numb. Pointless. She couldn’t even feel sorry for herself any more. The only thing left was the hollow ache of isolation, and anger at the only available target.

Someone had described this to her once, hadn’t they? They hadn’t had anger or loneliness; they’d had nothing, and they’d… what had they done? What was their name?

On top of the hill stood the man again, derailing Melanie’s train of thought. Now she’d never remember, and it was important! It was important, and it was gone!

“Go away!” she snarled at him.

“As you like.” He turned and walked down the other side of the hill, out of sight, but at his words, Melanie felt a stab of panic. She’d spoken to someone, and they’d responded! They’d spoken back! She was here, she was alive, she –

“Wait! Come back!” She sprinted up the hill.

But he was gone. She was alone, once again.

Melanie sat on the damp grass, and cried.

Someone had been here, and she’d chased them away. Like always. Because of who she was.

A distant memory arose. Someone eating pizza with her, and saying in a puzzled voice, “Then just be somebody else.”

Ha! But it wasn’t that easy, was it? You couldn’t just throw out who you were and start again with –

Georgie had.

Georgie! Georgie was important. The others had been forced to work with Melanie, but Georgie had chosen her, and Georgie… had been broken down all the way by something and rebuilt herself. She thought she was incomplete, that she was missing a piece, because she compared herself to the old Georgie who could feel fear, but Melanie had only known the new one and thought she was perfect. And Melanie had yelled at her and –

No, no; don’t worry about that right now. Don’t listen to the anger right now. That isn’t helpful. Melanie got to her feet, and kept walking, and tried to remember.

She had a girlfriend. She had friends. Friends she’d driven away – no, no; not now – friends who would have useful advice right now. Who was there? What would they say?

Martin would make her a cup of tea, and listen to her. He’d nod sympathetically and non-judgementally while she explained the problem, how the anger had helped her in every success she’d ever ha, how she’d latched onto the winning strategy until everything unexpected became an attack and every obstacle was a fight and the pieces of her that weren’t anger started to atrophy. He’d let her say what she needed to say, feel what she needed to feel, and he’d try to make her feel better, which he wasn’t all that great at – but Sasha was. Sasha would take her out to get drunk and share an amusing personal anecdote or two, and make Melanie feel normal.

Basira would ask questions. She wouldn’t be friendly about it, like Martin; her old police interrogation habits tended to crop up when she was trying to figure something out. But she’d be well meaning about it. She’d want to find out exactly what Melanie was talking about, how she specifically felt; try to pin down what the problem was so that Melanie would have the tools to solve it, because to Basira, bad things were problems that could, with thought, be solved.

And this one could; at least, Mary would tell her it could. She’d tell Melanie that she could simply make different choices; discard the old mask for a new one and be a person who wouldn’t yell or attack people or get angry, by simply choosing not to do those things when they came up. And she’d say it with such certainty and sincerity that Melanie would believe her.

And Georgie would hold her close, and help her through her breathing exercises, and explain how she had rebuilt herself, and how much she was looking forward to Melanie being whoever she wanted to be. Being someone who was happy with herself, whoever that was.

Melanie knew they’d probably all given up on her. That she didn’t deserve their support. But. But maybe she could become someone who did. She had nothing to lose if she _tried_. Yeah. That’s what she was going to do; she was going to be a good person, and she was going to _live_ again. She wasn’t going to be violent any more; she –

A wave of agony rolled up her leg, and she collapsed to the ground. The whole limb had cramped up. She gritted her teeth and waited it out, rubbing at the muscles. No stupid cramp could distract her now.

She was going to find her way home.

\-----------------

  
  


“Do you have anything?” Georgie demanded. “Anything at all?”

Basira rubbed her temples. “Georgie, I guarantee that the moment I find any fragment of a clue about what might have happened to Melanie, you will absolutely be the first person to know.”

“There’s got to be something we can do; some avenue to – ”

An alarm beeped softly on Basira’s phone. She glanced at it and immediately leapt to her feet. “Time to go!”

“Wha – ?” but before Georgie could respond, Basira had bodily picked her up and leapt out the back window. She rolled, got to her feet, and helped Georgie up.

“We gotta go!”

Georgie didn’t waste breath asking questions. She just followed Basira down the street and into a more crowded one. Only when they were surrounded by people did Basira stop.

“What was that about?” Georgie asked, breathing hard. Being an office worker and podcaster did not promote the same level of physical fitness as Basira’s career path.

“Lightless Flame,” Basira said, like that was some kind of explanation. She pulled out her phone and stared at it a bit more. “The fire will start… oh, there it goes. I have to call the fire department.”

Georgie waited for her to hang up before asking the obvious question. “What the fuck is a Lightless Flame?”

“It’s our nickname for the Desolation cult who I’ve been expecting to make a move since we blew up about a third of their congregation,” she said.

“You guys blew up – ”

“Oh, no, not the archive crew,” Basira said reassuringly. “I don’t think the cult care about the Institute right now. This was a side project; just me, Daisy, and Tim. The only cult we know of that have it out for the archive crew right now are the People’s Church, and we’re pretty sure they think we’re allied with the Lightless Flame, because of Tim. And the Dark aren’t going to launch an assault on the Eye’s centre of power any time soon, given how weak they seem to be right now, so the archive crew should be safe.”

Georgie tried to assemble a list of questions that would help her make sense of any of that, and immediately gave up. If she needed to know who Tim was or what the Dark had to do with anything, someone would tell her. Instead she said, “Safe except for meat monsters?”

“Yeah. But I _think_ – although it’s an unproven hypothesis at this point – that we shouldn’t have those kinds of problems so long as we keep Martin out of the archives so he can’t be sacrificed.”

This, too, was something Georgie resolutely decided that she didn’t need to know more about. “So right now you’re being hunted by a magic cult?”

“A pyromaniac magic cult. Yeah.” She frowned at her phone. “This attack makes no sense, though.”

“It… doesn’t?”

“I expected them to try to kill me. Or hurt me, at least.”

“They set your building on fire with you inside, right?”

“If they wanted to hurt me, I wouldn’t have escaped without injuries. They didn’t have someone outside the window, they didn’t move with any speed, they didn’t simply find me as I left at the end of the day and melt my flesh.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah. This was a warning. Or they just wanted to take something important from me. They do that. But I’m not particularly attached to my office, so I’m going with ‘warning’.”

“… Right. And these guys definitely didn’t take Melanie?”

Basira shook her head. “They have no reason to have problems with the Institute. They take a lot of random victims, to feed their god, but they’re not known for subtlety. If they’d… taken… her, we would’ve found the signs.”

“Right. If this cult’s hunting you, do you need somewhere to stay, or anything?”

“Oh, no. That would just put more people in danger. I’ll just steal Tim’s hideout until he comes back; it’s well hidden. If he has a problem with it he can take it up with the evil cult _his_ plan put on my tail.”

“Right.” Georgie glanced around at the people surrounding them, all studiously ignoring their Very Weird Conversation. People who presumably had no idea that the world was full of fear powers being used by evil cults in their struggles against each other to control or end the world, and that anyone could be snatched up at any time by some eldritch force or one of their servants. Just going through life, clueless about the danger they were all in.

God, she envied them.

\---------------------

  
  


Melanie crawled on her elbows into the house.

The cramping in her leg hadn’t let up, and as the sun had begun to sink she’d had no choice but to press on regardless. As she’d crawled laboriously through the hills until she’d spied the abandoned house, walls and windows torn by gunfire, she’d found the source of the pain cramping her leg, a pinpoint of origin for the agony where some _alien thing_ was fighting her. Or trying to hold on, while she fought it. She pushed the door shut behind her and made her way to the kitchen, where she found a vegetable knife; much better for the task at hand than her rusty machete. She sterilised it in vodka and got to work. Leaning back against the stained kitchen cabinets, she gritted her teeth against the pain and sliced into the bullet scar on her leg.

There, down there; near the bone. That was the source of her problems. An infection, a foreign invader to remove, and then everything…

That was a lie, of course. The anger was hers, and had been a part of her for far longer than the bullet that she’d welcomed into her flesh as flimsy justification for her actions. The bullet might worsen things, but she had made the decision. For now, though… there was a difference between what was True and what was accurate, and for now, what needed to be True was that the problem was foreign, tied up in that stealthy little metal parasite. She cut until she felt the metal, then she grabbed the kitchen scissors to act as tweezers and carefully drew it out.

The sense of relief was overwhelming. The pain of the incision was nothing compared to the cramping that had stopped the moment the bullet was pulled free from her flesh, and Melanie sank back against the cabinets, just sobbing and breathing for awhile, before coming back to herself enough to realise that she should probably treat the wound.

She found a first aid kit in the bathroom, and cursed herself for not finding one before performing amateur surgery on herself. Probably would’ve made the process a lot neater. With the kit and a sewing needle from the master bedroom, she treated the wounds as best she knew how before crawling, exhausted, into a bed.

The fight wasn’t over. It probably wouldn’t ever be over. But she’d taken the first step. And tomorrow, she could figure out what the next step was.

After she’d had some rest.


	81. Chapter 81

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter has to improvise.

Melanie sat back on the couch and wondered, not for the first time, whether she should keep some kind of diary.

There wasn’t all that much to do in this place. The house she was resting in while her leg recovered didn’t have a television, or even electricity. She’d idly thought about scrounging up something to fix the walls and windows, but she didn’t want to overuse her injured leg. She had managed to scrub a lot of the bloodstains from the floors (there had been no bodies, only blood, like every other place she’d stopped for a long time), and rearranged things so that the stuff she tended to use was close at hand; the place was starting to feel like hers. When she moved on, she would have left _some_ mark.

Did she need to move on?

Obviously, she would have to move on eventually. She had to get home, after all. And sometimes, when she managed to make herself believe that it was possible to go home, that she wanted to, that she deserved to, that the people out there still wanted her… it felt like she knew the way, knew which direction to walk. And then she’d have a moment of doubt, and lose it.

But there seemed no point in continuing until she could hold onto that. So why not stay until she could? Fix up this house, take this ruined place she’d found and make it a little bit better. She could do that; she could make the world a little bit better. There was no food here, but she hadn’t even noticed that for a couple of days, so clearly she didn’t need it. Anyway, if she wanted food, some of the other places she’d passed had had fresh fruit and vegetables (how had they stayed fresh?), so she could scavenge for things to grow a garden. And after she’d found her way out, maybe the next lost person to stumble upon this house would find it nicer than she had, with clean floors and intact windows and a garden growing well outside.

Maybe she should keep a diary. She could leave it behind, to help them. After she left.

After she learned to hold onto the desire, and the knowledge that she deserved, to leave.

\-------------------

  
  


Something had gone wrong, and Peter wasn’t sure how.

Melanie had been the perfect candidate. She still was, but what had been so simple had… somehow become complicated. Give her the little push she needed to attack someone close to her, leave her alone so that all that rage and hate had nowhere to go but inward, let her stew in her loneliness until she got used to it until the idea of having to deal with people, to hold herself in, to face judgement ever again, became unbearable, until the hollow fear of isolation became relief by comparison. Until she had no one to listen to but him, and the voices in her own mind. Then simply offer her the chance to stay alone and protected somewhere more interesting where she could still watch, where she could be a safe and silent observer forever, along with the chance to kill the very man she’d been wanting to kill for years. It was clear. It was simple. It was perfect.

But something, suddenly, had changed. Melanie had, out of nowhere, summoned the will to hold on. Decided not to be alone; a nonsensical choice when anyone made it, but doubly so for her. At least she’d finally gotten that bullet out that he hadn’t managed to extract; he needed her angry and wanting to kill Elias, but intact as a person. It would have been beyond frustrating for that thing to destroy her before he had a chance at the Panopticon.

What to do now? He could leave her until this new desire faded away. Let her become content in her little cottage and embrace a peaceful solitude. That would work just fine. Except there was a very real risk that she might find her way out before that happened; that whatever determination she’d found to tether herself to the world of people would strengthen over time instead of fade. He didn’t understand how that ever happened, but he’d seen it happen for some people. They held on to others and pulled themselves out. And if she escaped under her own power, she’d be almost impossible to isolate again.

He was going to have to take control of this before it got out of hand.

Damn Elias and his stupid wager. Damn himself for accepting. He could be at sea right now, but no…

And now, things would have to get _complicated_. He was going to have to lie. A lot. Peter hated lying; it meant he had to keep track of what he’d told people. The sooner all this was over, the better.

\---------------------

  
  


“They what?!” Daisy growled, eyes scanning the streets as if expecting cultists to leap out at them at any moment.

“It was just a little fire,” Basira said placatingly. “I wasn’t hurt. But the office doesn’t exist any more, so we’ll have to meet somewhere else.”

“Are you safe? Did they follow you home?”

“No, no; I’ve been laying low.”

Tim’s eyes widened. “That’s why I’m out of prawn chips! You broke into my place and ate all my prawn chips!”

“It doesn’t count as breaking in if you live in a tunnel and your door’s an old sheet.”

“But you did eat my prawn chips, didn’t you?”

“They were stale.”

“They were _premium aged_.”

“You’re staying with me,” Daisy said firmly, “until we deal with the rest of this cult. I knew we shouldn’t have left the job half finished.”

“The whole end of the world thing could’ve been time sensitive,” Basira said.

“But it wasn’t. Now, we deal with the Lightless Flame. I’m not leaving you again while they’re still around. Tim, we’re going to need everything you know about their members, where they live, all that. We’ll deal with this problem once and for all.”

“On it. Basira, you owe me chips.”

“Timothy, you owe me a new office.”

“… Let’s call it even.”

\-------------------

  
  


Melanie froze at the sight of the man in her doorway. What was his name again? She was sure she knew…

Peter. Peter Lukas.

“You’re back,” she said.

“And you seem to have finally calmed down. Excellent.”

“You trapped me here!”

“If I recall correctly, _you_ attacked _me_.”

“You… I woke up, and you were cutting into my leg!”

“And I would’ve done it more cleanly than that hack job. You’re welcome.”

“Sorry,” Melanie said quietly. “I… I just…”

“Jumped immediately to violence, as seems to be a pattern for you. I doubt the Archivist will ever forgive you for what you did to him.”

“He’s alive?”

“He’s alive. No thanks to you.”

“I thought… I mean, you tricked me! You made me think he’d trapped us! You tricked me into attacking him!” Melanie heard the spark of anger in her own voice and reigned it in, breathed deep, let it bleed away. Peter barely reacted.

“Did I? How so?”

“Those files you gave me to go through. About our contracts.”

Peter sighed impatiently. “As you well know, I gave you files to go through because neither I nor my assistants were legally allowed to look at them. Had Elias still been here, it wouldn’t have been necessary, but as it is whatever’s in those pages is between you, the files, and that soap opera of an archive. My stake in all this is a concern over an employee who tried, for some reason to kill the Archivist, and while I personally don’t much care if he lives or dies, having to explain that death to Elias would be an incredibly awkward conversation I’d just as soon avoid. Now, are you finished with your temper tantrum and ready to return to work, or would you like a bit more time here to calm down?”

_Ready to return to work…_

“I didn’t get sick here,” Melanie realised.

“What?”

“Being away from the Institute. We usually get sick if we try to leave. I’ve been here for ages, and I didn’t get sick.”

“Interesting. You’re welcome to stay, if you want to explore that further.”

“No! No, I’m… I’m ready to leave.”

Peter looked disappointed in her answer, but he reluctantly held his hand out for hers. Stiffening a little at the human contact, he opened the front door, and they both stepped through it, into the real world.


	82. Chapter 82

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What you've all been waiting for.

Martin’s next big breakthrough came at a time that wasn’t poetic, or tense, or remarkable in any way. He had a crick in his neck, and he stretched it left, then right, then pressed on the back of it with his fingers until it clicked.

Then he froze for a few seconds, nodded, and went to knock on Mary’s door loud enough to be heard over the ska music. It inched open, and a pair of eyes peered around the frame. Martin stubbornly ignored the weird way she was holding her fingers around the door and how she’d made them just long enough to be unnerving. She could tell it bothered him, of course, but he wasn’t going to cave and actually _show_ it.

“How many cervical vertebrae does a human have?” he asked. “Is it seven?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.” He went back to his room and called Basira.

Basira’s voice was strangely echoey. “Daisy! I’ve got a lead on one of Nolan’s flunkies. There’s a laundromat – ”

“It’s me.”

“Oh! What’s up?”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine. Daisy’s not actually supposed to call for another fifteen minutes; I thought maybe she and Tim had just got done with pest control early. What do you need?”

Martin considered asking what ‘pest control’ was, but decided against it. He’d get a more complete picture if he got Tim to tell him in more comfortable circumstances. “Humans have seven cervical vertebrae.”

“Uh… okay. Why are you telling me?”

“Because I didn’t know that five minutes ago.”

A pause. “You mean, you _know_ -know it?”

“I think so. I mean, I might’ve just read it somewhere and forgot, but – ”

“Is there a way to know for sure?”

“I don’t know? Jon never told me any of this stuff, and I’d rather not ask Elias if we don’t have to, since we think he might be trying to sacrifice me.”

“Yeah, best to keep away from him. I’ll make a note of it, and we’ll know if it happens again. Oh, we are going to do so many experiments…”

“You’re already getting the ESP deck, aren’t you.”

“Of course not! I don’t have it here. You’ve gotta pack light when crawling through a sewer.”

That explained the echoey sound on the call. He could ask about that, but… no, she was probably rushed and wouldn’t give as thorough an answer as he’d get if he waited. He could get the whole story together later, and it’d be more complete and coherent. “I wish you didn’t have that deck.”

“It was so useful when we were testing your compulsion questions!”

“I remember. You’d test me every morning until I could make you tell me what every single card was. It was exhausting.”

“It’s only forty five cards!”

“I will burn them, if you bring them back. I’ll bring an ignition source into the archive and burn them.”

“Ha. You just don’t understand the fun of science. Oh, things are – I gotta go!” She hung up.

Well. Someone was having an exciting day.

For now, Martin had another page of the ghost book to read. He was getting very close to the end of the book; that is, he’d read most of the pages that were in English, which were less than a quarter of the whole thing. The others, he… he wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with them. Maybe he could find a translator for some of the more modern ones, but some of the pages were in languages he didn’t think existed any more. Or maybe they did, and he’d just never seen anything like them in his narrow life experience. He’d figure it out when he got to them.

He’d summoned twenty one ghosts. Three of them wanted to stay in the book. So he had eighteen pages set aside, ready to burn.

He looked at his book, sighed, and put it away. He picked up his stack of skin pages, and went to knock on Mary’s door again.

“I need your help.”

“What is it, Martin?”

“It’s…” not a secret, not really; he wasn’t… he wasn’t hiding his use of the book from the others. Was he? No. He wasn’t hiding it, he just… didn’t want to bring it up and make them worry over nothing. Not a big deal. But how could he explain that to someone like Mary?

He gave up. “I need to you keep it a secret.”

She nodded, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “If the secret puts you in danger…”

“It’s not dangerous. It’s just… there’s something I can’t do, and I think you can, but it isn’t dangerous.”

“Okay.”

Martin didn’t make her promise to keep it to herself. Mary had always respected the sanctity of secrets, and if she decided to tell this one then that probably meant she’d recognised a danger in the book that he hadn’t. The whole point of having a group was to be able to rely on more than one person’s judgement.

Of course, by that logic, he should’ve told everyone when he started reading from the book, but…

He held out the pages in trembling hands. “Take these,” he managed to gasp.

She did. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, which was a lie. He didn’t like this. The… the unease, the inclinations to not do certain things was subtle enough that he could usually ignore it. He could treat his growing need for information as an unusual addiction, he could treat his general desire to not destroy the pages as an ominous but expected change in himself, but when it became physically hard to do things, that he hated. He hated the feeling of actually being controlled.

Then he remembered rubbing life into a recently paralysed hand and moving the pieces in place to sacrifice one man to send another to jail, fully convinced he was alone in his mind, and felt sick. Actually, no; _knowing_ he was being controlled was better.

“You have to…” he clenched is teeth. This wasn’t going to work. He had to be more circumspect.

Not a command or a request. Just truth. Just share information. That might work.

“Those are pages from the book of ghosts,” he said slowly, trying to approach the issue from the side. This felt… weird, but was a lot easier. “The ghosts in them don’t want to exist. They’re not having a good experience. It’s painful, and it feels wrong for them.”

“You want me to destroy these.”

He nodded.

“How? It’s okay, I’ll figure it out!” she added hurriedly at the nausea that flashed across his face. “I can do it. You don’t need to worry about it any more.”

Martin nodded gratefully, and ran to the bathroom to throw up.

He was going to have to do that again, when he got more pages. Would he get away with asking her a second time? With handing them over? Had the Eye ‘learned’ from this not to…

No, no; the Eye wasn’t like that. He had to stop personifying these entitites. It didn’t have wants or motivations or plans, just an essential nature… but it sure felt like it did, when things like this happened. It felt like something out there with a malevolent intelligence was targeting him. Maybe it was; maybe the collective fear that human societies had wrapped up into this construct acted in ways that could be called intelligent, like an AI. Or, for that matter, like Mary.

It didn’t matter. Point was, he was going to end up with more pages; the last couple of pages he could read, at the very least. And he might be able to hand them off to Mary, or the part of him that didn’t want information destroyed might stop him. He’d have to deal with the issue when it came, like he’d have to find a way to read the other pages. They didn’t deserve to remain trapped in agony just because he couldn’t read them.

That was a later problem. For now, he had another page to read. He flipped to near the end of the book, found and English page, and got going. Martin wasn’t in the habit of peeking at the names ahead of time, so he was surprised to get to the end and read, “And then Gerard Keay ended.”

The man who appeared before him was basically what Martin had expected, from the statements. A 30-ish year old man with long hair that was probably black (it was difficult to tell, through the muted transparency of the ghosts, whether it was ‘poorly dyed’), clunky silver jewellery and a black shirt with a band name written on it in letter so spiky that Martin couldn’t read it. He looked entirely unsurprised to be summoned back into existence, although a little puzzled to see Martin.

“Are they dead, then?” he asked.

“Who?” Martin asked, although he already knew the answer. The two most common questions the ghosts opened with were ‘where am I?’ or ‘are they dead?’, which… said some depressing things about how most people treated them when using the book, Martin supposed.

“The hunters. Who had this book.”

“I don’t know. I, uh… it was delivered to us. At the Institute. We don’t know where it came from.”

“Breekon and Hope?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll want to watch out for that. Magnus Institute, I’m guessing?”

Martin nodded. “I’m Martin. I’m the Archivist.”

“When did she die?”

“A few years ago.”

“Was it peaceful?”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“Ha. Good. She’d have hated to go peacefully, I think.”

“She was shot in the chest three times by the head of the Institute while she tried to burn down the Archives.”

Gerard laughed at that. “Sound like Gertrude. Pyromaniac with a cause.”

“So you… you knew Gertrude, then?”

“Yeah. We worked together for a few years. Until…” he gestured broadly at himself.

“Right.” Martin swallowed. “Well, um. The reason I’ve called you is to ask you if there’s… if there’s anything else you’d like to say, and any last requests I might be able to fill. And whether… whether you want me to burn this.” He gestured at the page.

“Ah. A charitable necromancer.”

“I’m not a necromancer!”

“You’re literally summoning the dead and talking to them right now.”

“Okay, point.”

“What’s that awful racket?”

“Oh, Mary’s music? She’s uh, she’s trying to find new music she likes. This is called ska, I think?”

“It’s terrible.”

“Last week she was into opening intros for old sitcoms.”

“Ew. Okay; I’ve got a last request. Grab a pen. I need you to list some bands that you need to convince your housemate to listen to. Because this is a travesty.”

Martin did so. Once he had a short list of bands with weird names he’d never heard of, he looked up. “Anything else?”

“Nah. That’s it. I didn’t exactly leave a lot of loose ends when I died.” He chewed his lip. “You’ll be wanting my story, I guess. Being the Archivist and all.”

“Only if you want to,” Martin said, in a tone that couldn’t help implying that he definitely did.

“Yeah. It’ll be nice to be remembered by _someone_ when I’m gone. So. To understand this, you’ve got to understand about my Mum…”


	83. Chapter 83

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gerry time.

One thing that Melanie had forgotten about the real world was the _noise_. There was a sense of everyone everywhere, of everything happening all at once, and with it, it brought noise; the sounds of people walking past Peter’s office, the… the sense that the building was full of others, and that horribly familiar feeling of being watched. Even just standing in the small room with Peter felt like being in a crowd. Even just staying present long enough to track what he was saying, being forced to live on a timescale compromised with another person to have a basic interaction, took so much effort.

“Obviously,” Peter was saying, “sending you back to the archives right away would be a bad idea. The last those people saw you, you separated one of them from his bodyguard and tried to kill him.”

“That won’t happen again.”

“I believe you, Melanie. But will they? Besides, how can you be sure? You saved the Archivist’s life the day before you decided to kill him. How do you know that won’t happen again?”

“The, the bullet’s gone now, so…”

“And that’s all it was, was it?”

Melanie didn’t have an answer for that.

“It might be prudent to give you a bit of time to adjust. And give them a bit of time to adjust, too, don’t you think?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Wonderful. I’m sure we can find something else to occupy your time. Tell me, how much do you know about computers?”

\---------------------

  
  


“And now I’m dead.” Gerard shrugged. “Funny how things work out, I guess.”

“Do you think Gertrude knew? About the cancer?”

“No. No; even she wouldn’t have – she wouldn’t have. She mustn’t have known.”

“Yeah. I’m sure you’re right,” Martin lied. “Did she ever just, um, know things? Without having to find them out?”

“Dunno. She never mentioned anything like that, but she never really talked about Archivist stuff. The whole thing made her uncomfortable, I think. She could make people tell her stuff, sometimes.”

“Only sometimes? Did the power not always work?”

“I don’t know? She didn’t like doing it. Tried to avoid it when she could. She always said that using powers you didn’t understand came with a price, and if they seemed cheap it just meant you hadn’t noticed the cost.”

Martin nodded. Ominous, that. Maybe he should be slowing down; using his powers and taking statements as little as possible. Try to stunt his growth. Did it even work like that? He wished he knew more about all this.

“I should… probably watch out for that,” Martin said.

Gerard shrugged. “Maybe. I never pledged myself to any power and I still ended up here in my thirties, so maybe it doesn’t matter.”

“You were _covered_ in eye tattoos. I have a description of it in the statements.”

“Oh, right.” Gerard laughed. “That little turf war. Just a bit of extra protection. Better than being burned to ash, let me tell you.” He looked at his own semi-translucent hands. The tiny eyes that Lesere Saraki had described weren’t visible to Martin in Gerard’s current form; it was hard to pick out minute details in the ghosts.

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Martin said. “Why did Gertrude to this to you? The people I’ve spoken to in here don’t make it seem, um…”

“Pleasant?”

“Yeah.”

“Heh. I’ve been wondering that for years. I figured at first she might still need me for something; the Unknowing, probably. But she left me behind, so…” he shrugged. “Has that happened yet, by the way?”

“Yeah. We let them get going and blew it up with a bunch of C4.”

“Ha! Very Gertrude move. Maybe being the Archivist makes someone a pyromaniac. Well. You didn’t need me, so I honestly don’t know why she did this.”

“Maybe for this reason? I mean, this book was sent to us. Maybe she thought you had some important information for the next Archivist, which she couldn’t give since she’s, you know. Dead.”

He shrugged. “If so, she never told me what it was. Anyway, I’ve been in the hand of a pair of obsessive hunters, and I doubt they were part of Gertrude’s book delivery plan. Meaning this has to be someone else’s scheme.”

“Any idea whose?”

“None. All my life, this was my Mum’s book, then Gertrude’s after she told me she could get rid of my Mum. I didn’t know Mum had taught her how to use the book, until…” he gestured at himself. “But whatever. If anyone else had designs on it, it was after my death, so I can’t really tell you anything about it. If you can find out who got it off the hunters, that’d probably give you your answer, but I don’t know how you’d do that.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Trevor and Julia. One of them has the surname ‘Montauk,’ but I don’t know which one.”

“Wait, Julia Montauk? The serial killer’s daughter?”

Gerard shrugged.

“That might be something. We have a statement from her. Although they’re both common names, so… guess you didn’t like them much, huh?”

“You try being a monster manual for a couple of killer hobos for a few years. Whatever the person who stole this book did to them to get it, I don’t feel bad for them. They’re not in here, are they?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been through most of the pages written in English and haven’t found anyone like that.”

“Well if they are in here, they deserve it.”

“I still can’t believe that Gertrude did this to you.”

“If you’d ever met her, you’d believe it. It was all about the work with her, just like Mum. I mean, it’s hard to argue with someone over that when the world is saving the entire world, but it did make it kind of hard to trust her. Sacrificing other people for the greater good was kind of her go-to move, when fire wasn’t an option.”

“She sacrificed a lot of people?”

“Let’s just say that she ran out of assistants long before I came on the scene. She’d talk about them sometimes. Not often; she wasn’t the kind of person to talk about the past much. But when you got her in the right mood. She lost one of them stopping the Spiral’s ritual; I don’t know how but I think it was her fault. Burned another one alive after they got corrupted by the Spider, but I don’t know if that was ritual-related. She was never much for giving details, but let’s just say I wasn’t _completely_ surprised to wake up in here.”

So the Spiral’s ritual had been stopped. Good to know. “Oh, the rituals! Do you know what other rituals she stopped? We know about the Flesh and the Buried, and the Spiral now, I guess; the Desolation lost their power with Agnes and we blew up the Unknowing, and stopped the Corruption a few years back. And apparently the Slaughter was decades ago. Did Gertrude stop any others?”

Gerard shrugged. “Couldn’t help you there. She was always focused on the future. Planning for the Unknowing, for most of the time I was with her. She also said she had something for the Watcher’s Crown – you know, the Eye’s ritual – but she never explained what.”

“So we do have a ritual coming up,” Martin said, heart sinking.

“Guess so. You gonna help end the world?”

“No! I just… don’t know how to stop it. I work for a manipulative mind reader who can see whatever he wants at any time. He’s said Gertrude got good at hiding things from him, but I don’t know how to do that.”

“Hmm. The Dark helps, I think. The Stranger or the Spiral can confuse the Eye, of the practitioner’s not experienced or strong enough, but the Dark’s a straight-up blind spot. If you can make allies there, that’ll probably help.”

“The People’s Church are pretty weak right now. We _think_ their ritual failed recently and killed a lot of them, but we’re not certain.”

“Hmm. Pity. About them being weak, I mean. Might be hard for them to help.”

“It’s a bit of a blessing, since due to some complicated coincidences involving some of my friends they think we’ve allied with a Desolation cult to wipe them out.”

“That’s unfortunate. Are you allied with a Desolation cult?”

“No. Said friends are in the sewers working on wiping that cult out right now.”

“… Huh. Things have become pretty dramatic since I’ve been gone, huh?”

“They’re not completely out of control, but…”

“They sound pretty out of control.”

“I mean, yeah, they’re not in my control, exactly. But we’re surviving. She only talked about the Unknowing and the watcher’s Crown? Wasn’t working against any other rituals?”

“Not that I know of.”

Hmm. That might mean the world was safe. Well, except from the Eye, which… maybe he should’ve just let Melanie kill Elias. They’d all die, but the world would be safe.

Which ones were they still on the lookout for? The Vast, the Lonely, the Web, the End, and the Hunt. Better tick them off the list for certain before doing anything… extreme. Maybe Martin should visit Elias in prison and force him to tell about his ritual.

“Anything else you need?” Gerry asked.

“No. No, I think that’s about it. Except for… do you want me to burn this? Or would you rather stick around? I assume you at least want to find out why Gertrude bound you to – ”

“No. I’m done living on Gertrude’s terms, or my mum’s. I’m… I’m done, I think. Burn it.”

“Right. Okay.”

“And for everyone’s sake, give that list of bands to your housemate! This music is embarrassing.”

Martin laughed. “I will.”

“’Bye, Martin. Good luck saving the world.”

“Goodbye, Gerard.”

“Gerry.”

“What?”

“I always… wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”

“Goodbye Gerry. Uh… I dismiss you.”

Gerry left, and Martin carefully cut his page out of the book. He set it aside. Already, his debt to the ghosts was mounting again… he probably should’ve done this before handing the pages over to Mary. Could he just slide this one under her door? Would that be hard for him to do?

No; he should find the strength to do this one himself, somehow. He needed to be able to do this sort of thing himself; he couldn’t let the Eye win. And Gerry, who’d spent a lifetime as a pawn for his mother and then a pawn for Gertrude, and then an afterlife as a pawn for hunters… a no-strings-attached death was something that Martin should be able to give him, without handing the job off to someone else. He’d do it himself, tomorrow. Now, it was time for bed.

Well, now it was time to give Mary Gerry’s list. Then it was time for bed. Martin would tolerate a lot from a housemate, but he drew the line at having to fall asleep to ska music.


	84. Chapter 84

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our girls are reunited.

Melanie couldn’t face the archive crew right away. They’d be angry about her attacking Martin, and then she’d get defensive and try to explain and they wouldn’t listen and that would just make her angry… but there was someone she wanted to see.

She worked in the little office Peter had given her until long after closing, when she was sure the building would be as close to deserted as possible, before heading home. The people on the street and the bus avoided her as she made her way… not home; she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have a home any more, she hadn’t paid rent in ages, but…

The look on Georgie’s face at the sight of her was priceless.

“Melanie,” she whispered.

“Hi, Georg – ” the rest of her greeting was crushed out of her by Georgie’s hug as she swept her inside and kicked the door closed just in time to stop the Admiral from making a break for it.

“Are you alright? Is everything alright? Wait – are you real?”

“I’m okay. And real.”

“Are you… I mean, I think maybe we should get Martin to – ”

“What, interrogate me in case I’m a monster here to kill you?” _No, no; don’t be angry; DON’T get angry. Let it bleed away._ “Sorry, I… I can’t talk to Martin right now. I just can’t.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened, then?”

“No. I mean, yes; I want to, I will, just… not right now, okay? It’s been a long time since there’ve been… questions.”

Georgie didn’t look happy about this, but she nodded. “Okay. I’ll put the kettle on.”

\---------------------------

  
  


It was four in the morning, and Georgie hadn’t gotten a second of sleep.

From memory, she knew this was the sort of thing that might have made her terrified in the past, back when that was possible. Now, it was just sort of annoying, in a tense way, that she had to stay so alert or risk death. All this monster stuff had poisoned everything, poisoned even the joyful reunion between her and the wonderful woman she’d been so worried about, because she had no way of knowing if the woman currently sleeping beside her was Melanie.

Georgie had seen what the things out there could do. She’d met – Melanie had worked with – one of them who specialised in pretending to be human. So when her girlfriend showed up on her doorstep finally home, finally safe, completely out of the blue, Georgie could feel nothing but love and relief… and worry, that it might be a trick. Melanie hadn’t explained where she’d been, which was both suspicious and understandable. She didn’t want to see Martin, the one person who could clear up her identity easily, and hadn’t explained why – suspicious, but also probably understandable, depending on what she’d gone through. She’d kissed Georgie and gone to bed with her but decided in less than a minute that she didn’t want to be touched; also perfectly understandable, unless she was hiding something. Georgie had found a still-healing wound on her leg, and that had filled her with compassion and concern… and relief. The first thing she’d felt was _relief_ , because it was evidence that Melanie was more likely to be real.

Melanie needed her here, to believe her, to support her, to trust her, and Georgie had to do that unconditionally. But… Melanie could turn out to be fake, a mask worn by something that wanted to kill Georgie, which would mean that doing any of that just made Georgie a doomed idiot.

She couldn’t fall asleep. She couldn’t trust herself to fall asleep. But she couldn’t be suspicious of Melanie, not when Melanie had clearly been through something awful, not when Melanie needed her.

This was the best and luckiest thing to happen in months.

And it sucked.

\-----------------------

  
  


Basira’s second favourite thing about her days in the archives, after access to the Institute library, was watching Sasha take phone calls. Any time anybody bothered to call her it was to explain something completely bonkers, so Basira had made a new game of watching Sasha’s face and listening to her responses and trying to figure out what the hell the call was about. It was only six in the morning – way too early to be in, but Basira felt safer in the archives where the Lightless Flame couldn’t get in unnoticed, and Sasha was having another “disagreement” with her ISP and had slept in the archives for internet access reasons – and already this call from Martin was proving a real puzzler.

“Okay, slow down,” Sasha said, looking confused. “You spoke to who? No, that – why? How?”

Hmm. He’d spoken to someone surprising and possibly dangerous, but through unknown means; so not Elias. Someone from one of the cults targeting them? Or maybe Peter? He was impossible to get hold of.

“That’s not possible. He’s _dead_.”

Ah. Okay. None of those people, then. Male, that was a start; how many dangerous men might he have spoken to who should be dead? Was it Adelard Dekker? She hoped it was Adelard Dekker. She’d kill for a conversation with him.

Oh, Mike Crew! It could be Mike Crew! If he’d been magical enough to survive the gunshot or, or resurrect, or something…

“What do you mean, you’ve been working your way through the book?”

Dead guy, someone supernaturally focused on information ‘working your way through the book’. In retrospect that was very predictable. Probably shouldn’t have let him just hold onto the evil book of dead people without questioning it. Still, that massively increased the possibilities – maybe it _was_ Dekker. Or Jurgen Leitner himself!

“She put her own son in there?”

Mary Keay’s son. Gerard. Still good!

“What do you mean, Gertrude did it? Why?”

Hmm. One mystery solved, another immediately raised. Gertrude had been putting people in Leitners?

“Martin, if you just go around _using evil books_ without telling us, how are we supposed to know when the book… eats you, or something? Yes, I know you’re telling us now, but – right. The Dark, he said? Look, if it stops us from feeling watched all the time, I’m all for it. Okay, I’ll… wait on your email, and then go deal with this. Right. Thanks.” Sasha hung up. “You would not believe the story Martin just told me.”

“He’s been messing around with Mary Keay’s weird animal bone book, summoned Gerard Keay, and he’s confessing this to you now so you know where his information comes from when he tells you that the power of the Dark can hide us from the Eye somehow. Also, we should probably look into the fact that Gertrude apparently used to have that Leitner. Maybe that’s why it was sent back here?”

Sasha stared.

“Well,” she mumbled, “I was gonna explain it in a dramatic and entertaining way, but if you wanna go all Nancy Drew again…”

“So now we’ve gotta play nice with the People’s Church and try to borrow some of their concealment powers? Might be hard, since they think we’re ending the world.”

“That’s the problem. We are, apparently. Or someone is. I assume it’s Elias.”

“So he does have an upcoming ritual. Fantastic.”

“Apparently Gertrude called it the Watcher’s Crown and had a plan to destroy it.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing her plan involved burning down the archives. And that it didn’t work, and got her shot three times in the chest.”

“Y’know, that’d be my guess too.” Sasha glanced around. “What do you think would happen? If we did burn down the archives, right now? Elias isn’t here to stop us, and I doubt Peter would care.”

“I think we should try to find out if there are any more parts of that plan first. If we just burn everything without knowing if there’s a part 2, we might mess everything up.” Basira’s gaze fell on the boxes of blood-soaked statements sitting in one corner, still under plastic, from the meat monster attack. “Hey. Those statements.”

“Yeah?”

“Did the meat people go after them deliberately, do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Basira said thoughtfully, “when they attacked, we assumed that Martin was the target, and the statements were kind of in the way. But I read the statements from the Prentiss attack; she went out of her way to destroy statements in the archives. And those meat monsters attacked early, at a time when a lot of people wouldn’t be at work yet. So what if the statements were the target, and we were in the way?”

“You think our attackers aren’t necessarily trying to sacrifice the Archivist. They’re trying to stop the Watcher’s Crown.”

“Makes more sense, right? I don’t know how the tunnel collapse fits in, but why would Corruption or Flesh avatars want to help Elias with a sacrifice? Stopping his ritual, though…”

“Huh. So you’re saying we should burn this place? Because I can get petrol for cheap.”

“I think we need more information before we do anything. But, if I’m right, then both Jane and those meat guys had more information. So…”

“So we definitely need to be talking to outsiders,” Sasha finished. “There are people out there who know about this ritual. I guess we really are going to have to talk to the People’s Church.”


	85. Chapter 85

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie tries to make progress.

“I was in another dimension, I think,” Melanie announced, apropos of nothing, at about six in the morning. She hadn’t checked whether Georgie was awake, so Georgie wasn’t sure if she was being spoken to until she continued, “Alone. So it’s… I’m not used to talking to people any more. It’s hard to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to explain,” Georgie said, desperately hoping that she was about to explain.

“Thank you.”

The room was quiet, until Georgie ventured, “Who did this to you?”

“Peter.”

“Peter?”

“Peter Lukas.”

“The Lonely guy?”

This was enough conversation, apparently, because Melanie didn’t answer. Or maybe she’d fallen asleep again.

It was a full five minutes before she said, “It was self defense. I attacked him.”

“I’m sure he deserved it.”

“I thought so at the time.”

Georgie considered pressing further, but Melanie had sunk back into the pillows, her breathing evening out. Asleep.

With a sigh, Georgie got up to make herself a very strong coffee and get ready for work.

\----------------------

  
  


Elias watched Martin pick up Gerard’s page, hesitate, put it back down, and go to make tea. With little else to do between helping the police with cases, he’d spent a lot of time trying to unravel the mystery of whether there really was anything special about the Von Closen line beyond Elias’ own paranoia, and so far he’d learned… nothing.

Martin did Martin things. Some of them were things that Elias would’ve predicted, from what he knew of the man. Some of them were wholly unexpected. None of them gave any indication whether or not Martin had any kind of link with the Library, any kind of special information about it, or any affinity with Leitners. He handled the Leitner he used well enough, and had approached it without fear and with an understanding of how it worked, but ‘read a page and talk to a ghost’ didn’t require all that much intuition. Besides, he’d already read about it in statements.

He’d shown neither any awareness of, nor inclination to find, the Library under the Institute; in fact he avoided the tunnels entirely. But the whole point was that the Library was hidden. Even Elias had a great deal of trouble finding it sometimes. So Martin’s failure to even look for it meant nothing, except that if he did have some kind of connection with it, it couldn’t overcome Elias’ protections and Smirke’s architecture. Or that he could, and just didn’t feel the need to; perhaps it had simply never come up. Elias had found no knowledge of the Library in his mind, but a human mind wasn’t a book. More than once he’d missed important, surprising information simply because the person who had it didn’t think of it as important or surprising.

His resources were limited in prison, but perhaps he should arrange for Martin to receive another Leitner? A more dangerous one that the Archivist had never heard of? Then he could observe whether he seemed to know more about using it safely than the average person…

No; he couldn’t risk killing his Archivist now just for the sake of curiosity. The last thin he wanted to have to do was start all over again. Keeping the assistants around for a third Archivist simply made it far too risky that they’d catch on to the fourteen marks plot, and killing them off and starting again was something he’d rather avoid if possible. He wanted to attempt the ritual sometime this century, after all.

Elias couldn’t have even said _why_ he cared so much whether the Von Closens were special, at this point. It could not possibly have mattered less. In the past, they’d been worth monitoring as a possible threat, but now there was only Martin left and he was the Archivist. If the world’s last Archivist shared some mystical connection with the rest of the Library and was somehow mystically destined to collapse humanity’s Tower of Babel… good! That meant things would probably go smoothly! If he didn’t… fine! Elias’ initial plan hadn’t accounted for that anyway; he lost nothing! The whole Von Closen thing had been a strong reason to favour Martin as the Archivist, just in case, but now that he was in place it had no further bearing on anything. Elias himself had no idea why he was so hung up on it.

Was he jealous? Possessive of his Library, of his plan? No; that made no sense. The Archivist, _his_ Archivist, was a piece of his Library. They would belong to Elias and be connected to the rest of the Library no matter who they were. Perhaps Elias just wanted to close this mystery before the collapse? Maybe. He had a strong suspicion that the tower’s collapse would destroy the Library as it finally fulfilled its purpose, and Elias, like any good servant of the Beholding, did love to know everything he could, to be able to tie things up into a little bundle of complete knowledge. That might be it.

Elias was pulled out of his reverie by someone clanking something against his door. “Bouchard. Director will see you in ten minutes. Be ready.”

He masked his irritation and put on his cooperative face. Time to pay the rent, so to speak. He was trying to remake the world here, but whatever random criminal his gracious hosts wanted him to find or identify as surely incredibly important.

Why hadn’t he just gone on the run, again?

\-----------------------

  
  


Melanie was gone by the time Georgie returned to the bedroom with two cups of coffee. Georgie sighed and went to dispose of the second one. Would Melanie be back again that night? Probably. Georgie didn’t think she had anywhere else to go.

Why were so many of Georgie’s relationships defined by people not having anywhere else to go?

\-------------------------

  
  


“Hold still if you want to be able to use the arm properly again,” Daisy said, applying something medical-smelling to said arm.

Tim winced and tried to obey. “It’ll heal up fine. The burns always heal fine.”

“As if Nolan didn’t leave your neck all scarred up.”

“Chicks dig scars. They make you look brave and mysterious. Just ask Basira. Basira, Daisy’s scars – ow!”

“Sorry,” Daisy said, with no sincerity whatsoever.

“Daisy’s scars make her look brave and mysterious,” Basira confirmed, not looking up from her book. “Your scars make you look like someone who makes bad decisions.”

Tim glanced around the shabby one-bedroom apartment where a violent ex-cop was applying home first aid to some rather extensive injuries that someone not being hunted by fire cultists would have taken to the emergency room. “Bad decisions? I’ve never made a bad decision in my life.”

“There,” Daisy said. “Time for the bandage. Arm out. And you’re sleeping on our couch tonight.”

“I’m perfectly fine – ”

“Sleeping in a filthy cave full of spiders while missing a lot of skin?”

“My cave is immaculate. But I see your point. Anyway, you can’t blame me for the Nolan scar; I was new at this back then.”

“It wasn’t that long ago. You’re still new at this. If you weren’t, she wouldn’t have got you this bad.”

“I got her worse!”

“There’s one of you and we don’t know how many of them. You need to take care of yourself better.”

“Well, there’s one less of them now. And the sooner we clean up the rest, the sooner they’re not a threat.”

“If we can find the rest,” Basira put in. “They’re better at going to ground than we are. If you do find more and manage to catch one alive, I’d like to have Martin question them.”

“Taking one of the violent boiling wax people alive might be a bit tricky, Basira. Ow!”

“Hold _still_ , I said.”

“I _am_ still. You’re pulling.”

“Don’t be a baby.”

\------------------------

  
  


Melanie was halfway through editing a library staff schedule in her little office when a timid knock came to the door. Not Peter; on the rare few minutes he’d popped in to give her more paperwork, he hadn’t bothered to knock. She steeled herself and said, “Come in!”

Sasha opened the door, and stared at her like she was seeing a mirage. “Melanie.”

Oh. It was time for this. “Hi, Sasha.”

Sasha barrelled into the room, getting almost within arm’s reach – way too close. “Melanie! Are you okay? Where have you been? What happ – ?”

“I can’t do this right now, Sasha.” Melanie’s hands balled into fists.

“But where – ?”

“Not now, Sasha!” she snapped. She must’ve sounded more aggressive than she’d thought, because Sasha immediately backed to the doorway.

“I just… wanted to see if you were okay,” Sasha stammered.

“I’m fine. Thank you. Just… busy, right now.”

“Right. Uh, later then.” Sasha left.

Melanie made sure the door was properly closed, then let herself relax. That… could have gone better. It could have gone a lot worse, but it could have gone better. She knew she wasn’t ready for people yet. When she got overwhelmed, she got defensive, and that made her angry, and… she could’ve really hurt Sasha. Like she’d hurt Martin.

Probably better that she’d chased her away, actually. Although she supposed she had to get used to this again; taking into account other people’s schedules. In the other place, she could move at her own pace, but here, people would want things from her, and they’d want them on their schedule. Even simple things like reassurance that she was okay.

She’d be more okay if they left her alone for a bit.

But that wasn’t an option, was it? Not out here. She’d chosen to come back, she’d chosen not to give up; and that took more than one grand gesture. That took more than cutting a bullet out of your leg and letting someone lead you back into the real world. The thing about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step was that you still had to take all the other steps afterwards.

Melanie started googling therapists.


	86. Chapter 86

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey you know what we haven't done for a while? Traumatised Martin.

“Something’s wrong with her,” Sasha announced as she sat back down at her desk.

“Wow, what gave it away?” Basira asked, flipping through a book. “The part where she disappeared for ages without explanation and didn’t even tell us when she got back, or the part where she tried to kill Martin?”

“I’m serious. Mary?”

“Mmm?” Mary’s typing didn’t slow.

“You said she was wrapped up in fear, like Tim or Martin. Can you tell us any more about it?”

“It called to violence.”

“We know that much,” Basira said. “So, like… Slaughter or Hunt?”

“Might be Desolation,” Sasha said. “Just because that cult sets everything on fire doesn’t mean every Desolation avatar would. And they seem pretty violent.”

“They have been recently, with me and Daisy and Tim, but that’s incidental, what with killing them and everything. I don’t think violence is like, integral. Mary, do you know what entity she’s caught up in?”

“No. I don’t really understand how you draw your borders, and I’m not part of the Eye. I can’t see anything like that; I just know her fear acts differently.”

“Okay,” Basira said, “but if we got you to interact with some other avatars and learn how the different fears responded to you, that might be a useful – ”

“It doesn’t work like that. It’s like… okay, imagine there is a man. He has twisted his fear around himself, but it’s not fear of the Stranger, so I don’t know much about it. Unbeknownst to me, this man is struggling with a fear of madness or mistrust of his senses; what you would call the Spiral, and it manifests by moving his environment around him, getting him lost in endless hallways or labyrinthine forests. This doesn’t change the way the man responds to me at all; I am not related to what’s marked him. I can tell that he is marked by something that’s not related to me, but that’s all. Right?”

“Right.”

“Now imagine another man. Same situation, except _this_ man’s fear of his unreliable senses manifests as unpredictable hallucinations that cause him to do strange and dangerous things; he might think he is eating a cake only to realise he has killed and eaten an animal, for example. This man, if he’s aware of the situation, responds to me very differently. He’s practically immune to me. He would see me and assume I am a hallucination; that I am nothing to be afraid of because I am not real. Now, he might feel fear because he might see me as a sign that something is going on, but he’s not afraid of me; he responds with a different kind of fear. He responds differently to me than a normal person would, unlike the first man. It would be easier for me to notice that he’s marked by something, but no easier to tell what it is. Right?”

“Right.”

“So let’s look at a third man. This man’s fear of his own senses has summoned a stalker, some incomprehensible being that defies time and space. This man isn’t for me, and I’d probably be able to tell that after a little while, but unless his stalker is extremely distinctive and easy for him to identify like Mr Crew’s was, he is very vulnerable to me. He is hyperalert for people that don’t make sense. All three of these examples are marked by what you would call the Spiral, and from a human perspective they’re all different manifestations of the same thing. But to me, they’re all incredibly different, and far more like manifestations of other entities than they are like each other.”

“Right,” Basira said. “Unfortunate, I guess. Well, I’m going with ‘slaughter’, given what she did to those meat people.”

“She’s different now,” Sasha said. “She’s…”

“Stronger?”

“Maybe. Maybe stronger, or maybe just different. I mean, she’s never attacked me, so maybe that’s just what it feels like, but when she wanted me to leave her alone it was… threatening in a different way.”

“Different than hauling off with a butter knife?”

“Yes! She’s always been liable to snap, but when she wanted me to leave she wasn’t… it wasn’t like she wanted to attack, it was more like an animal snarling or making themselves look big. Like, the focus wasn’t violence so much as I just really wanted to get away. It’s… hard to explain the difference, I guess? I mean, I generally want to get away if I think someone’s going to be violent, but…” she shrugged. “It was different.”

Basira nodded. “Maybe once she’s willing to talk about what happened, we can fill in the gaps on that.” She glanced at her phone. “Oh hey, it’s nearly ten in the morning. Time for an extended lunch break. You guys coming?”

“I’ll text Martin and see if he wants to join us,” Mary said. “I don’t like leaving him at home in case he gets kidnapped, but he doesn’t seem to like me crowding him, so… oh, he’s busy.”

“He should be safe at home,” Basira said. “He’s only ever attacked here.”

“Jon was kidnapped from his home. And Martin made a statement about being held under siege by a worm person long before he was the Archivist.”

“… Okay. Point.”

Sasha got her coat. Her ridiculously dangerous job didn’t come with hazard pay, but it did come with the ability to take frankly absurd lunch breaks with impunity.

And that was almost as good.

\--------------------------

  
  


Martin wasn’t that busy. Not really. He had one singular important task that he planned to accomplish that day. He just had no idea how long it would take.

He had a fire tempered glass dish down on the table. He had Mary’s culinary blowtorch in hand. He laid Gerry’s page in the dish, and stared at it.

He could do this. The Eye didn’t own him, not that completely. _He could do this_.

Initially, he’d been going to use a candle, but he didn’t actually know how flammable dry human skin was. He’d hate to go through everything, only for the page not to catch. So tiny blowtorch it was.

He raised the torch and clicked the little button. A tiny blue flame, just hot enough to cosmetically torch the surface of creme brulee and so forth, jetted forth. He wondered idly whether that would be enough; perhaps he should pack up, wait until he found something hotter…

No. He was just procrastinating. He could do this. Not all the information in the world belonged to the Eye… not all the information in the world belonged to Martin. This was what Gerry wanted. It was what Gerry deserved. There was enough basic human decency within him to do this.

Martin lowered the torch.

It wasn’t like pushing against an invisible wall, or anything. It was more like fighting a cramp or a spasm. Martin was viscerally aware that the rebellion was coming from him, from inside his own body. Furthermore, he was aware that it was his own reluctance, inside his mind, like if an urge for procrastination had suddenly taken on the urgency and inescapability of a panic attack. Gravity did half the work for him as he lowered the torch, little by little, and held it, teeth gritted, fighting the urge to flee as flame touched skin.

By the time Gerry’s page caught alight, Martin was openly weeping. He burned his hand unthinkingly reaching forward to try to put out the fire.

But it did catch. And soon he had a glass dish full of ash, which he carefully disposed of before putting the dish in the sink, the torch away, and only then collapsing onto the kitchen floor, shaking.

That shouldn’t have been hard. That wasn’t him; that difficulty shouldn’t have been a part of him. How much of him wasn’t the Martin Blackwood who’d first joined the Institute any more? Everyone grew and changed all the time, of course; even without supernatural interference, nobody was the same person they’d been five years ago. But how much of what was in him was simply an aspect of the fear he served? How much of Martin Blackwood, the one he was now, the one he’d become, as actually an inhuman force made from and motivated by suffering?

How much of the human Martin Blackwood been hollowed out and disposed of to make room for it?

Martin cleaned the house for a bit. It was an old habit. Helping people calmed him down, made him feel like he was making things better, and when that wasn’t an option, helping improve the environment was a good enough substitute. He did the dishes and gave the kitchen a once-over, and took a shower. That was productive. That was progress.

Then he took out Mary’s book.

He didn’t need to read from the book. Not really. Gerry had given him his story less than a day ago, and the next ghost would probably want to tell theirs (they usually did want to, once Martin asked), and he knew it was a bad idea to overindulge in statements. But flicking through the book earlier, he’d noticed something – there was only one English page left. He didn’t know who it was – he never peeked in advance – but that didn’t matter. They might need him.

The others knew he’d been reading the book, now. Did Sasha and Basira take exception to how he was using it? Because if so, if they thought it was dangerous to just go around casually using barely-understood Leitners without supervision, they’d probably want to lock the book up or give it to artefact storage, and he didn’t really have a good argument for that. It’s not like he could insist on holding onto it. When someone’s mailed a dangerous supernatural artefact by an unknown person, then sneaks that artefact home without telling anyone and obsessively uses it for a couple of months, if they get all defensive and possessive when people try to take it then that’s probably a really good sign that people should take it. It wasn’t a good look.

And if they did want to hand the book to artefact storage, or at least lock it up and introduce some rules about archives people only using it when everyone was there or something like that, then that was a reasonable conversation. They were supposed to decide these sorts of things as a group, after all. But… but there was one last page in there that Martin could read. One final person who Martin could help.

He should at least finish the job.

He opened the book to the very last page, and started to read.

“His world shrank gradually. First, it became the confines of his own body, and very quickly, just his nightmares. Then even they began to fade, greying out and becoming inaccessible one by one until he was staring into an unseeable dark far more terrifying to him than any actual horror he had witnessed. Although he had already lost the capacity for reason, he was gifted with one last thing to Know; that had he been stronger, had he changed faster, he may have had the chance to avoid this. He may have had the chance to stand away from death and become something it could not touch, or at least, could not touch quite this easily. But he wouldn’t have that option. And his last thought was that that might be a good thing.

“And so Jonathan Sims ended.”

Had the reading itself not long become an automatic process, there was no way he would’ve been able to finish the name. As it was, it was hard to breathe as he looked up and saw – yes! Yes, that was him! Scars and grey hairs nearly impossible to make out in his translucent state, but those same eyes, the same way of standing, that familiar look of adorable bafflement on his face as he looked around, trying to figure out what was going on.

Martin swallowed around the lump in his throat and forced himself to speak.

“H- hi, Jon.”


	87. Chapter 87

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversation time!

“Martin? What’s going on? Where – ?” Jon caught sight of his own semi-transluscent hands. Then his eyes flicked to the book in Martin’s hands. Martin sheepishly tilted it so he could see the page. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s… this is a lot.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“So… the Unknowing?”

“Right! Stopped. You guys stopped it, and everyone except you survived. And Elias is in jail.”

“Oh. Good. That’s… that’s very good.” He gave a small smile. “Sorry to mar our perfect score by dying. So, uh, this might be a stupid question but, but why…?” he gestured at the book in Martin’s hands.

“I didn’t do this! I don’t know how, and even if I did, there’s no way I would do this to someone. This book was sent to us. I didn’t know you were in here until, well, right now.”

“Well it’s good to know we’re _equally_ confused, I suppose.” Jon cleared his throat. “So what happens now?”

“That’s kind of up to you? I mean, normally I, I summon someone and I ask if they have any stories they want to tell, and any unfinished business or final requests. Then I ask whether they, uh… whether they want to stick around. Or whether they want me to burn their page.”

“Oh. I’m guessing you’ve had to burn a lot of pages, then.”

“Yeah. A friend did most of them, but yeah. Being in the book doesn’t sound, y’know, pleasant.”

“It’s not.”

“So, uh… do you have any? Last requests?”

“I don’t know. Nothing you wouldn’t already have taken care of, I suppose. I… I died. Wow.”

“You saved the world.”

“We saved the world.”

“You guys saved the world. I wasn’t really involved.”

“Just because you weren’t at the wax museum didn’t mean you weren’t involved.” He looked at his hands again. “You know, when I was in college, there was a time when I was with my girlfriend at the time and I genuinely thought we were about to die. It was terrifying. But she just looked at me, completely fearless, and said, ‘Jon, the moment you die will feel exactly the same as this one’, as if that was supposed to mean something. I didn’t get it at the time, and I didn’t really believe her, but… she was right.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “One life for a world. It’s a bargain, really. So then…”

“I don’t want you to go,” Martin said in a rush. “I, I know this isn’t healthy, after we’ve all grieved and everything, and I will burn your page if that’s what you want, of course I will, I just… I really, really don’t want to do this again. I don’t want to k-kill you all over again, I don’t… you’re _here_ , and that’s a fucking _miracle_ , and I have so many questions, things about these powers that you’ve gone through and nobody else has, and I just – I’m sorry, I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m not trying to guilt you or anything, I just… I wanted to tell you that first, okay? I’ll do it, but I don’t want you to go.”

Jon blinked at him. “What makes you think I want you to burn my page?”

“Oh. You… you don’t?”

“I don’t know! I’m only just now learning that I’m _dead_. I haven’t exactly had time to adjust! On the one hand, yes, I don’t think I should exist; it hurts, and it’s wrong, and I’m not afraid to… well, I’ve already died, but you know what I mean. On the other hand, this is kind of a permanent decision!”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Martin said. “You can stick around for now. Take your time. And, and when you are ready, well…”

“I should be ready now. My existence is a, a betrayal to the… the natural order.”

Martin snorted. “What natural order? The, the natural order of us all being preyed upon by fear monsters and superpowered psychopaths trying to end the world?”

“Technically, psychopathy is – ”

“You know what I mean, Jon! Everything we’ve learned about the world since moving to the archives has been awful. Sometimes, things work out, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not inclined to honour fair play or the natural order if the universe itself won’t. So, yeah. I’m going to keep living in this house that my monster friend is using her supernatural anonymity powers to avoid having to pay for, and I’m going to use evil statement trauma dreams constructively to keep tabs on whether my friends are alive, and I strongly recommend that you keep existing if that’s what you want to do, evil book or no, because if we’re all probably going to be eaten by spiders or burned alive by cultists or sacrificed by our own employer in his voyeuristic fear temple then we might as well get whatever the fuck we can out of it first!”

Jon stared.

“A lot’s happened to you, hasn’t it?” he ventured.

“Not as much as has happened to _you_.”

Jon chuckled at that. Was dead Jon in a better mood than live Jon? That was depressing. “Those statement dreams you mentioned.”

“Yeah.”

“Martin, did you… are you…?”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Martin said defensively. “Somebody was going to have to be the Archivist. If we all refused, Elias would’ve just nominated someone who had no idea what was going on, like you, and we didn’t want to tie up yet another person in this mess! One of us had to do it, and I – ”

“Okay, okay!” Jon put his hands up. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. I just… it’s tough. I’m sorry you’re having to do it.”

Martin nodded. “It is. I haven’t been kidnapped though, unlike you.”

“What happened with that scar on your face, then?”

“Flesh monster bit me. An attack isn’t a kidnapping. My record stands.”

“Ah, yes. Sounds so much better. How, uh, far along are you? With the powers?”

“I think I might’ve started Knowing stuff yesterday. But it’s hard to be sure; we’re… waiting to see if it happens again. I’ve got the Compulsion down pat, but I haven’t noticed anything else.”

“What about the statements? What happens when you don’t take statements?”

“I don’t know. It hasn’t really come up? Taking them from… well.” Martin blushed. “Taking hem from living people is, is a lot better than the written ones, and the people in the book are kind of a middle ground, but there are always plenty of statements. What happened to you?”

“Well, at first I developed a sort of compulsion. An addiction, I suppose. If I went too long without a statement I wouldn’t feel right until I took one. After that, if I went to long, I’d start to get sick. Like Tim, I suppose, when he tried to leave the Institute. I don’t know if it would’ve eventually killed me or not, but…”

“I’ll be sure to keep some around. Shouldn’t be hard, with an archive full of them. Good to know.”

The front door opened. Mary must be home.

“Are you going to tell the others about me?” Jon asked.

“I think I kind of have to? Unless you want me to keep it a secret.”

“No. No; it’d be good to see them again. Before…”

 _Before you decide to leave us again_. Martin tamped down the angry thought. He’d spoken to enough ghosts to know it wasn’t remotely fair to blame Jon for that decision, if he made it. When he made it.

Very few of them had decided to stay. And none of them had seemed sure about it.

Martin dismissed him and put the book away. Well, tomorrow promised to be interesting.

\---------------------

  
  


Generally, there was a long wait list to see basically any decent therapist. But Georgie knew someone who knew someone who could sneak Melanie in within the week.

Melanie could see the questions in Georgie’s eyes as they ate lasagna together while some random TV show played in the background. Melanie wasn’t paying attention; it was too much to follow at once. Even the noise of the TV was anxiety-inducing, but Melanie didn’t think Georgie would want to sit in silence, so she didn’t mention it.

Instead, she said, “Things were slow, there. I’m still trying to adapt.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve been out for two days. Give yourself time. It took me months to get even remotely complete again.”

“This isn’t like that, though. Nothing happened to me, I just…”

“You got chucked into isolation by an evil servant of loneliness.”

That had been Melanie’s fault, but she didn’t try to explain. It was complicated, and would have taken too much effort, and Georgie wouldn’t have listened.

She was starting to worry about that. About how Georgie had just let her in, unphased by everything that was going on. Melanie knew why – it was the fear thing. It had to be. Georgie was putting herself in danger because she couldn’t tell how dangerous Melanie was, without fear.

No, no; don’t blame Georgie. Melanie was taking advantage of her lack of fear. She hadn’t meant to, but she was.

They were going to have to talk about that. Another time. When Melanie was able to hold a proper conversation.

For now, she ate lasagna, and worried.


	88. Chapter 88

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets caught up.

Mary had never seen the archives so crowded.

Melanie’s office door was locked and she hadn’t responded to knocking, but everyone else was there. Sasha perched on the edge of her desk looking for all the world like she was engaging in ordinary office gossip. Daisy, by the door, looked alert for threats; Basira, next to her, looked to be taking in as much information as she could. Tim was crammed into the corner, somehow looking confused and entertained at the same time. And everyone was staring at the transparent figure who stood awkwardly next to Martin and gave them all a little wave.

“Hello, everyone,” Jon said.

Silent stares greeted this.

“So,” Basira said eventually, “I have several complicated questions.”

“Yes, I thought that would be the case. I doubt I can answer them, though.”

“Let’s start with, why?”

“No idea.”

“Who?”

“Still no idea.”

“ _How_ , then?”

“Even less idea. Except for the obvious part,” he said, indicating the page with a wave of one hand, “but I don’t know how they gained access to my body.” He grimaced. “That’s still a very strange thing to say.”

“Unlike the rest of this situation,” Sasha chirped. “But at least we have some idea of why Martin was sent this book now. And that whoever it was probably meant good with it, not harm.”

“I’m glad you’ve attracted the attention of a _well-meaning_ necromancer,” Jon said drily.

“Better than the alternative!”

Tim piped up. “What’s it like being dead, boss?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it, to be honest. And I believe Martin is your boss now.”

“Actually, Basira is.”

Jon frowned, confused. He glanced at Martin. “I thought – ”

“Tim doesn’t work here any more,” Martin explained. “He found a way to quit.”

“Oh! Congratulations! How – ?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Martin said quickly.

“I’m a bounty hunter now!” Tim declared.

“Private investigator,” Basira corrected.

“No, you’re a private investigator. I don’t have a PI license.”

“What happened to your arm?” Jon asked.

“Lightless Flame cultist. I wasn’t quick enough.”

“Wasn’t observant enough,” Daisy corrected. “You took your eyes off the prey and let her circle behind you. And you didn’t pay enough attention to your environment and let her corner you.”

“So what was I supposed to be watching, the target or the environment?”

“Both, if you want to keep both arms.”

Jon raised an eyebrow. “I see you’ve found a much better work environment,” he observed drily. “Definitely a step forward.”

Mary wasn’t worried about Tim’s arm. He’d healed worse, and his skill at channelling fear was growing rapidly under Daisy’s guidance. A real human might be worried about that – they didn’t like to change too quickly, it upset the illusion that their mask was somehow real and constant. Humans preferred to turn into different people slowly enough that they didn’t realise it was happening, and didn’t have to think about it.

And despite their discomfort whenever she spoke of such things, they had no problem whatsoever with this shade being Jon. The human that had been Jon was done with it, being dead, and someone had hoisted Jon onto this construct, and while everyone was confused and wary they seemed to have no problem with the idea of it being Jon. They always acted sort of confused when _she_ talked about exchanging masks. Had they learned more since then? Or maybe they saw a critical difference that she was missing.

“So _somebody_ put you in the book,” Basira said, “then gave the book to Martin, without including anything so considerate as actual instructions.”

“Apparently so,” Jon shrugged.

“Is there any particular information you know that we might need? Something your binder couldn’t have just written on a bit of paper for us?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“If the page is taken out of the book, will it still work?” Sasha asked.

“Yes,” Martin said with Observing certainty. “The page have to be bound between the covers to enchant them in the first place, and the order’s important if they’re being used for a more complicated binding to construct… well, I don’t know how any of that works, but an individual page works just fine if you take it out.”

“We should do that, then,” Sasha said. “These books tend to go walkabout. If that happens, we don’t want to lose you, Jon.”

“That’s probably a good idea, but are you sure the page won’t do the same?”

“No. But it’s worth a try, right?”

There were some goodbyes, Martin dismissed Jon, and everyone stood around for a bit looking at each other awkwardly.

“That as very weird,” Tim commented.

“Yeah,” Sasha said acidly. “Having a dead friend suddenly resurface does tend to get a bit ‘weird’.”

“I said I was sor – ”

“Of course, in Jon’s case it’s not really his fault. He died and someone brought him back, and as soon as he was brought back into the world Martin brought him here to us.”

“Sasha, I – ”

“Imagine how much of a dick move it would have been if he’d been in this world the whole time, completely able to go where he wanted under his own power, and just never bothered to tell us he was alive. That would be way weirder, right? A sign he was truly an arsehole.”

“Yeah, well, next time I miraculously survive a building collapse, I’ll let you know right away, alright?”

“Next time, she’ll already know,” Martin pointed out, tapping his temple.

“There won’t be a next time if you learn to read your environment properly,” Daisy said.

Tim threw up his good arm in exasperation. “What is this, Dunk On Tim Hours?”

“You make it too easy,” Mary pointed out.

“Even the monster’s ganging up on me.”

“You locked me in a safe,” Mary reminded him, but without any real anger in her words.

“Pfft, they let you out. I would have, too, if I hadn’t been…”

“Playing dead?” Sasha finished for him.

“As much fun as Dunk On Tim Hours is,” Martin cut in, “what should we actually do with this?” He held up Jon’s page, neatly sliced from the book.

“Frame it,” Sasha said immediately. “Hang it up in your office.”

“You want to put his predecessor on the wall like the world’s worst diploma?” Basira asked.

“Vellum’s delicate – not as delicate as paper, but delicate – and human skin is thin. We don’t know how durable it is outside the book, so best to put it in something so it doesn’t get torn up of covered in blood or anything if we’re attacked again. And best to hang it somewhere accessible, so we can summon him whenever we need, but also somewhat restricted from the public, so others coming in don’t do so by accident. Stick it in that little corner behind your Weird Conspiracy Wall, and the public won’t see it even when they visit your office.”

“This job is weird,” Basira noted.

Martin shrugged. “Who wants to go picture frame shopping?”

“I’m not leaving while you’re in the office,” Mary said. “In case something attacks.”

“We’ve got to be at the train station by eleven,” Basira said. “There’s a Desolation victim we have to track down who might be able to explain why we’re not dead yet.”

“I’m trying to track down this Manuela person before the People’s Church panic over thinking we’re attempting the Watcher’s Crown and attack us,” Sasha said. “They talk about her a lot, but nobody will say where she actually _is_.”

“Has to be us, then!” Mary chirped, grabbing Martin’s hand. “Unless there’s other stuff you have to get done in the office this morning?”

“Uh, no. I’ll grab some statements to smuggle home for later, and we can go.”

“Illegally removing statements from the archives!” Sasha gasped, widening her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “You’re such a bad influence on us, boss.”

“You don’t care that he took a bone-dropping Leitner home,” Tim pointed out, “you’re not going to convince anyone you care about Joe Spooky’s ghost story.”

“Technically, that Leitner was given to Martin and he never signed it over to the Institute, but those statements are Institute property. Which is theft, not that you would – ”

Mary didn’t hear the rest of the banter, since during this time Martin had grabbed a couple of statements from the ‘to record’ pile and left the room with her. They left the Institute in silence, and when they were a little way down the street and alone, Martin said, “So. What do you think?”

“About what?” Mary asked.

“Jon. It’s not… it’s not really Jon, is it? I’m just fooling myself.”

Mary turned this statement over in her mind, trying to make sense of it. “Is this another weird human thing?”

“Heh. I guess so. Because that, in that page is just… it’s memories of Jon, right? Not the Jon we knew. I shouldn’t get this attached.”

Yeah, this was definitely a weird human thing. “You’re just memories of the Martin I knew yesterday,” she pointed out.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Well, people… people change every day, sure, but you can’t just take a person and transplant it onto – ” he glanced at her. “Well, I guess you can, can’t you? Or at least you think you can, as much as I think you can’t.”

“Taking other people’s masks isn’t what I’m for, actually,” Mary shrugged. “Some things like me can, but I’ve never tried.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes. I do. A human is a story imprisoned in some meat. Jon’s meat is dead, and somebody wrote his story down, and this bothers you.”

“You make it sounds so simple.”

“It is simple.”

“No, it’s not! I mean, on the one hand that’s, that’s Jon, that’s everything I lo – everything I remember about him, and he’s agreed to stay, at least for a little while, and he’s just… he’s there, I can talk to him. But on the other I, I know it’s not, or at least not all of him, and I can’t stop thinking that… that treating him like Jon is a betrayal to the real Jon, you know? Like, if I died, and my friends just resurrected a facsimile of me and pretended that was somehow the same, that that was just me in a different form… that would be awful. But, but he thinks of himself as Jon, and in every practical respect… I mean, it’s unfair to Jon to treat them as the same person, but it’s just as unfair to treat them as separate. You know?”

“I do.”

“Do you really?”

“Of course I do. If humans weren’t weird like this, I wouldn’t exist.”

“Ha. Right. This kind of thing is probably a goddamned feast for you, right?”

“Martin.” Mary put a hand on his shoulder and fixed him with her most serious expression. “It’s early, and it’s already been a long day. Let’s just drop your statements home and go buy the goddamned picture frame.”


	89. Chapter 89

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the aro ace author who has never flirted in their life tried to write Tim flirting.
> 
> Sorry everyone.

“Melanie.”

Melanie jumped, and squashed down her irritation at being startled. “What do you need, Peter?”

“I need you to record this, actually.” He placed an old, typewritten piece of paper on her desk.

She glanced at it. “A statement? Shouldn’t the archives – ”

“Contractually speaking, you do still work in the archives,” he pointed out. “The people down there are currently involved in some kind of soap opera nonsense, which really isn’t any of my business, except that Elias is getting rather tetchy about not enough statements getting read. Something about the Archivist’s external reading not as stabilising as internal… well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really listening. But I’d rather not interrupt whatever incredibly important thing they’re all doing right now, so unless you want to talk to them yourself about it – ”

“No, I can read it,” she said, picking up the statement. Confident that she was already alone again, she poked around in the desk drawers until she found a tape recorder, and started to read.

\-------------------

In the end, Martin brought a slim rose gold frame with a heavy aluminium backing to keep Jon in. The rose gold was fairly similar to the shade of salmon that he knew to be Jon’s favourite colour, even though Jon always told people his favourite colour was navy blue. But Martin had noticed the way his eye always tracked salmon things. He probably thought salmon wasn’t a professional enough colour to be his favourite, but rose gold was definitely tasteful, and even if he didn’t think so he could blame Martin. The solid backing was, of course, vital for his protection. Martin wasn’t losing him again.

 _No, don’t do this to yourself, Martin._ Martin wasn’t losing the ghost of Jon like he’d already lost Jon, until the ghost decided it was time, which he would eventually. And Martin would be ready. He’d be able to take a flame to… or, or he could ask someone else to take a flame to…

He knew no one of the Beholding really liked to destroy information, but did they normally have this much trouble? Martin’s struggles certainly felt excessive; burning Gerry had not been a pleasant experience, and he didn’t think it should’ve been quite that difficult. Maybe they did. Elias had hidden tapes it would be better to destroy, and Elias was pretty thorough, so he must’ve found it almost impossible to destroy things. Jon had never really talked about it; he supposed he could ask him later.

Martin hung Jon up one the wall, made sure the frame was straight, and stepped back. Yes. Perfect. He caught sight of… something, out of the corner of his eye, a shadow maybe… and froze.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been catching sight of something in the corner of his eye over the past few days. He hadn’t really worried about it; it could just be his own hyperawareness, or something an optometrist should look at. More likely, it was a new Seeing Things Superpower; maybe he could sense emotions or, or flashes of the past, or signs of the supernatural, or something like that. He was keeping tabs on it in case it did turn into something like that, so he could properly tell the others about it, but ‘occasional weird flashes of darkness or movement’ wasn’t really much to go on.

Or it could be yet another supernatural force stalking him. Which, normally… fine, the People’s Church kept following him around anyway, as did Mary, and almost certainly Elias’ supernatural sight. But alone in his office, in the archives where things kept trying to kill him, he’d really rather that wasn’t the case.

He hurried out, back into Mary’s sight, and they got out of there.

\-------------------

  
  


It was a little early to be out drinking, but fuck it. Kyle had had a rough week and even if the bar was a little empty right now, well, that just meant he’d be nice and suave when people started to show up. That was how it worked, right?

He wasn’t drinking by himself in the middle of the afternoon for _sad_ reasons. It was strategic. But still, just in case it might have gotten a little sad, he was profoundly relieved when the stranger sat next to him and said, “You look like you know this place. What drink would you recommend?”

Kyle looked the stranger up and down. He was… oh, Jesus. He looked like he’d been pulled out of a girl’s romantic YA novel and aged up to be Kyle-appropriate. The little round scars that speckled his face and arms like freckles somehow enhanced is good looks, helping bring out the cheekbones already highlighted plenty by the way his ruggedly untidy dark hair framed his face. He had the stirrings of a five o’clock shadow, broken only by a pink, hairless scar across his throat and one or two of those little holes, and bandages poked out from one sleeve of his leather jacket suggesting an entrancingly dangerous lifestyle. His eyes were like ice and rested steadily on Kyle like he wanted to drink all of him in at once, like a slightly chubby middle manager with a bad haircut was the only interesting thing in the room. It was a gaze that made Kyle feel like… like prey. But not in a scary way. In a playful, safe kind of way.

He drank the last of his beer, trying to moisturise his suddenly dry throat, and tried desperately to think of a cool, sophisticated drink that this stranger would definitely be impressed by.

“They do good, um… White Russians,” he stammered. That was a cool drink, right?

“Thanks for the tip.” The man glanced up at the bartender, who just so happened to be there right when he was needed. (The part of Kyle’s brain that was still capable of rational thought recognised that there were about four people in the bar, so of course the tender could just walk over to the new guy who’d just sat down; the rest of his brain told it to shut up and stop spoiling the coolness.) “Two White Russians, please.” To Kyle, he added, “I’m Tim.”

“K-Kyle.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Kyle. You waiting on anyone, or…?”

“N-no! No, it’s just… just me.” Oh, god that sounded pathetic. It was meant to sound welcoming but it sounded pathetic.

But Tim didn’t seem to think so. He smiled easily. “Story of my life, it seems.” The White Russians were placed in front of him with perfect timing, because of course they were, and he pushed one towards Kyle. “I’m just visiting from London, so I’m sort of alone here. No idea what to do locally to fill in the time.”

Kyle’s mind raced through the available local attractions and came up blank. So instead he stammered out, “Oh, I’m from London. I mean, originally. Been here for awhile, though.”

“Oh. You move for work or something?”

“S-something like that. Well, no. That’s a lie. It was a girl.” He sipped his rink and cursed himself silently. Nobody wanted to hear about exes in situations like this! What was he doing?!”

“Ex?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah. I hope it’s not selfish of me to say I’m relieved to hear that.”

“Ha, me too, believe me.” Change the subject, dammit! “So, um. Why are you… in town?”

“Just a work thing. _Very_ boring.”

“Where do you – ?”

“Publishing,” said the scarred daredevil in leather and denim with a perfectly straight face. “Textbooks, mostly. My last project involved a very lucrative run of advanced accounting coursebooks.”

Kyle stared.

“How about you, Kyle? What do you do for a living?”

“Um, just… I’m a, a cleaner, actually.”

“A man with actual practical skills! I feel sort of shown up now.”

“What?” Kyle blushed. “No, it’s – cleaning isn’t – ”

“It’s one of the most valuable skills in our society, next to cooking and fermentation. If we lost all the publishers in the world, the world at large probably wouldn’t notice for about five years, then they’d adapt. If we lost all the doctors, that would be pretty bad; quite a lot more people would die, or be in unnecessary pain, but life would go on. If we lost all the cleaning and sanitation workers, the world would grind to a halt in under a week.

And so they talked.

When Tim bought him a second drink immediately after the first, Kyle became aware that the man was trying to get him drunk. He didn’t see why someone like Tim would think that kind of thing was necessary (did he know how hot he was?), but free alcohol was free alcohol. It wasn’t until he had trouble walking properly that he began to regret his lack of restraint. Oh god, he was going to embarrass himself _so much_.

“Do you wanna get out of here?” Tim asked, and Kyle felt a jolt of panic; he was definitely going to make a fool of himself. Then he figured, fuck it. If the hot stranger hadn’t already realised what a terrible decision he was making, that was on him.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

“I’m staying in a kinda shitty motel right now – ”

“My place is close. Come on.” Being a little unsteady on his feet meant he got to lean on Tim’s good arm, which was nice.

And that was the last thing he had a clear memory of, until he woke up in the morning on his own couch with an awful headache. Some painkillers and a glass of water sat on the coffee table, next to a business card and a little note. He read the note.

_I’m sorry about what happened to you. I’ve had supernatural experiences, too. These guys hear you out and follow up on those kinds of stories; consider giving them a visit if you’re even in London again._

The business card was for some place called the Magnus Institute.

Oh, god. Had he really just sat and sobbed about – ugh, he had, hadn’t he?

He’d blown it!

\-----------------------

  
  


“Not spending the night with the cleaner?” Basira asked as Tim walked into the hotel room.

“You wouldn’t have asked that if you saw how drunk I had to get the guy to make him talk. I’m not a rapist.” He handed her a docket. “Here’s what Lukas owes me for alcohol.”

Basira’s brows shot up. “Wow, you did have to get him drunk.”

“Most determinedly tight-lipped guy I’ve ever had to seduce. ‘Course, it means the story I got was rambly and full of holes. We should bring Martin next time.”

“He doesn’t take live statements.”

“On the one hand, I hear and understand you. But on the other hand, consider this: there’s about an eighty per cent chance that we could push him into trying the same strategy and slipping his questions in unobtrusively, meaning that we’d get to watch Martin K Blackwood try desperately to chat up a stranger in a bar.”

“Y’know, a sight like that almost is worth failing to get the information and getting burned to death by cultists. But you did get the information?”

“Yeah, I’ll email you the file. You can have the fun of piecing it together into a coherent story. Guy’s a sweetheart but he can barely construct a sentence a few drinks in. How’s Daisy doing?”

“She’ll be back in an hour or so, and tomorrow we can head back home.”

“Good. I can’t wait to see my own house again.”

“You live in a creepy tunnel network.”

“A non-flammable tunnel network that our enemies don’t know about and that seems to resist at least some supernatural powers, like the Eye.”

“That you’ve filled with decapitated heads.”

“I only own three decapitated heads!”

“… Yeah. Yeah, that’s a perfectly normal number of decapitated heads to have.”


	90. Chapter 90

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie makes a decision.

Melanie had no idea what she was going to tell her therapist.

Not the truth, obviously. Even if she wasn’t the Ghost Freakout UK girl, her story would make her sound delusional, and that wouldn’t be helpful for anyone. She had been publically missing; she wondered how long the could put off talking about it, just saying she’d been alone. The therapist would probably think she’d been kidnapped and kept in a basement or something.

Which was… kind of true, if ‘abandoned battlefield world’ fit your definition of basement.

The rest of the archive crew had stopped trying to contact her, at least, which… okay, she knew she had no right to feel hurt about that. She was the one who kept snapping at them and making them leave. They were perfectly justified in giving up on her.

She glanced at Georgie, sipping coffee at the table, waiting for Melanie to finish scrambling the eggs. Georgie decided they were cooked enough and dumped them onto a couple of plates; she wanted to get into work early, since she’d have to leave early for her first therapy appointment.

“You sure therapy will help?”

Georgie shrugged. “It helped me. It’s what it’s for.”

_You weren’t dangerous, though. You didn’t try to kill anyone close to you. And it still left you without fear, and I’m taking advantage of that, taking advantage of you, by being here._

Melanie ate her eggs. Her feelings must have been clear on her face, because Georgie said, “You’re too hard on yourself. You were ambushed and hospitalised by meat monsters, then thrown into a – ”

“What? What do you mean, about the meat monsters?”

“The ones who ambushed you. You went back to clear them out, right?”

Melanie tried to remember. There’d been the attack, and then she had gone back to check for more monsters that night, before Peter gave her the forms… and Georgie assumed the monsters had hospitalised her, which meant she didn’t know Mary had done it. She didn’t know about Melanie’s confrontation with Martin.

No wonder she was accepting of her. _She didn’t know what Melanie had done_.

“I have to go,” Melanie said quickly, getting up.

“Hang on,” Georgie said, “what – ?”

“I can’t be here. I shouldn’t be around you, it’s not safe. They didn’t tell you what I did.”

“What you did?” Georgie followed her to the door. “I don’t understand.”

“Get away!” Melanie snapped. But it didn’t work. Georgie stepped back, respected her space, but she didn’t turn and leave the room like people usually did when Melanie snapped at them. “You shouldn’t – it wasn’t meat people, it was Martin. I made a bad assumption and I got Martin, without even thinking about it.”

Something flickered across Georgie’s face. Confusion? Probably disgust. In the circumstances, it had to be disgust. “Melanie, what are y – ?”

But Melanie didn’t have the energy to justify herself right then. Why was Georgie still there? Why wasn’t she leaving Melanie alone, like everyone did, like Melanie deserved? She stormed for the door; Georgie grabbed her arm.

“We have to talk about – ”

Melanie pushed her off.

It wasn’t a dangerously hard shove, but it did smack Georgie into the wall. They both froze, surprised., and anger bubbled up in Melanie. Was Georgie stupid? Why was she surprised? She knew what Melanie was; she had to know, and if she didn’t believe her about Martin, she’d certainly believe her now. Now that Melanie had attacked her. Melanie had to make her understand, before she got hurt, before Melanie took a knife and –

“Leave. Me. Alone,” Melanie snarled, and stormed out, slamming the door.

At least she’d get to work early.

\-------------------

  
  


“I didn’t really try to destroy much information,” Jon admitted. “I don’t think I had as much trouble with it as you, though. You’re saying you threw up?”

“After burning Gerry’s page, yeah. I feel like maybe I should, y’know, slow down, but… but there are still five rituals we don’t know anything about. What if the Lonely apocalypse happens because I’m not strong enough?”

“You’re talking about me.”

“I didn’t say that.” Martin sighed. “But, I mean, it’s written right there on your page. That you Knew you might have lived, if you’d had more power.”

“It is. Which seems like a bit of a violation of privacy, to be honest. Although I guess privacy went out the window when we started working in this place. So far as the rituals go, we also need to consider the opposite scenario.”

“What opposite scenario?”

“What if the world ends because you’ve got just enough power to be… sacrificed by Elias, or whatever the hell he’s doing? I mean, Basira’s theory is that he’s trying to sacrifice you in the Institute, right? And here you are, in the institute, talking to me. We don’t know if there’s a Lonely ritual in the works, but we do know that the Watcher’s Crown is.”

“Yeah, I… I know. I just… well. You know what it’s like.”

“Yes. I do.”

\---------------------

  
  


It was around ten in the morning that Melanie got the call.

“Yes?”

“Hi, I’m calling from the office of Dr Lania Tolstoy. I’m looking for Melanie King?”

The therapist’s office. “That’s me.”

“Our apologies for the short notice, but Dr Tolstoy won’t be able to make your appointment today. She’s out of office.”

The receptionist sounded very stressed. A suspicion began to grow in Melanie’s mind. “What happened? Is she sick?”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss that. We can reschedule for – ”

“She’s missing, isn’t she?”

A pause. “I can’t discuss her reasons. We have an opening at – ”

But her tone told Melanie everything she needed to know. She hung up.

Well. That was a thing.

Melanie didn’t think she was stupid. She wasn’t the brightest person in the world, but he hadn’t been blind to Peter’s clumsy attempts to isolate her. She’d played along, of course, he was right – she was too dangerous. She wasn’t sure why he’d slipped her that paperwork that contained the secret to their freedom (which he must have read, no matter what he said), but she’d been sure he didn’t expect her to immediately try to kill Martin. He’d tried to help; her, in the hospital, by extracting the bullet; she’d attacked him, and he’d had to resort to other methods to protect himself and everyone else.

But her therapist suddenly disappearing like this suggested something very different. Why wouldn’t Peter want her to get therapy?

Something was going on here. And she had no idea what the goal was. One advantage she had, she supposed, was that Peter clearly thought she was a complete and utter idiot, for him to do something so obvious; that, or he was truly bad at manipulating people. Maybe both. That was good. Playing the idiot would give her wiggle room. One disadvantage was that Peter would have to be Elias’ pawn or partner in this; It was Elias’ Institute, and he’d put Peter in charge. And Elias had magic see-everything powers. That was a problem.

Ironically, Melanie wasn’t going to be able to figure this out alone. (Was that ironic? She’d google the definition later.) She was going to need help.

She spent about an hour doing the most boring, run-of-the-mill work on her schedule, work that nobody would want to magically watch her do. Then she took a chance on firing off a brief email to Sasha.

Whatever sinister plan Elias and Peter were cooking up, they were going to figure out how Melanie was involved. And they were going to take it down.

\--------------------------

It had been a very long time since Sasha had had to worry about The Man. Back when she was little, being raised among a mishmash of hackers, anarchists and criminals, The Man had been a real threat that she’d been taught how to deal with. She’d been schooled from an early age of what to say when the police came to the door, and once, when they’d gotten too close and she and her mother had to disappear for awhile, she’d been Ellen Parks for three weeks, ‘just like a spy’.

And then her mother had died, and she’d gone off to college, and while she did plenty of illegal things at the Institute, none of them were anything that any kind of Man would care about. She kept up the old habits, of course, because you never knew who might be out there looking to target you, but her interest in the unknown threat of The Man out there preying on the common workers had shifted to an interest in the unknown monsters out there, that had to be found, researched, hidden from.

And then she’d received an email from Melanie, with the subject line “Read this in the tunnels.”

The email was short. Melanie explained her suspicions, and explained what she needed – a way to communicate with people that Elias and Peter wouldn’t be able to detect. It wasn’t enough to encode the messages – they had to believe that she wasn’t communicating with anyone.

Now THAT was a challenge.

Sasha put together what she knew of The Man.

1) The Man was two people. This was a massive handicap for him – usually The Man was a government organisation, at the very least, and these days they often had access to supercomputers. Of this duo, one seemed pretty much tech illiterate (according to Melanie), and the other was in jail. So that was very helpful; they had the time and energy of two human people, albeit two human people with a lot of free time.

2) The Man could see pretty much anything at any time. This would have to be done using Resistance rules – assume you are under surveillance at all times, except when you are certain that you are not. And when you are not under surveillance, assume The Man sees this as suspicious.

3) The Man could read minds. Elias’ habit of actually visiting the archives or calling face-to-face meetings in the past suggested that he could probably only do this in close proximity. Maybe he needed to see the target with his own eyes. Since he was in jail, this was simple enough to deal with – don’t visit Elias in jail.

4) The Man had the ability to wander about unnoticed, and also to fling people into his horrible loneliness dimension at will. Not really relevant to Sasha’s task, but important to keep in mind. Do not piss off Peter Lukas and get Vanished, and know that he could probably bypass any surveillance you set up and come find you if he wanted to. On the plus side, he seemed to hate everyone, so that probably wasn’t going to happen, but still.

Okay. She could work with this. It seemed impossible but it wasn’t; nothing was. It was just a _challenge_. She could work with this.

She was going to need to find some old friends.


	91. Chapter 91

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mary is 100% correct, and another Michael-adjacent name is added to the supporting cast.

Sasha’s first thought was Hermann, but as much as she wanted to see him, he wouldn’t be useful for this. She had no way to communicate safely with him while Elias might be watching. Instead, she took the time to track down Michail. Michail had been in “The Resistance” before coming to England (he never said which one), and she’d spent a good portion of her childhood on his knee, listening to old stories. Which meant, incidentally, that she knew a lot of their code phrases.

He wasn’t all that hard to find, actually. He was in the phone book. But he was a three hour journey away, and that was annoying.

She found him sitting on his front porch drinking cider, because of course she did. She hoisted her handbag over her shoulder and gave him a cheery wave as she jumped his little garden gate. His eyes widened at the sight of her.

“Baby Star?!”

“Vulture! It’s been a while.” She braced herself just in time to absorb the impact of an old man barrelling into her, pulling her tight into a hug. He put her down and kissed her cheeks.

“You’re so big! How have you been?”

“Pretty good, pretty good. Banged up my knee last week.”

Michail’s gaze immediately sharpened. That was code for ‘assume we are under surveillance’.

“You need somewhere to rest, while it heals?”

“No; I’m just passing through. I actually need some computer work done, and I thought you might know better people for that than me, these days. I’ve kind of been out of the loop.”

“Building yourself a good life! To live happy and help others live happy is the best form of resistance. You will have some cider with me.”

“No, I really shouldn’t – ”

“Nonsense! You’re a growing girl. You need the vitamins!”

“Does cider have vitamins?” Sasha asked as a giant glass of cider was somehow magically produced and pushed into her hands.

“Of course! It is apples!” Michail sat at his little table and gestured for Sasha to sit across from him. “Now. What can your uncle Michail get for you?”

Sasha handed over her handbag. “Just a computer program. I’m trying to track down this weird cult,” she said, rubbing her ear with two fingers (‘what I am saying is a lie for our surveillers; please disregard’). “Details are all in the packet. So is payment.”

Michail reached in and pulled out the stack of money. (Melanie must be doing reimbursement approvals, or else Peter clearly didn’t care, because the request for the three thousand pounds had included no receipt and Sasha had put in the description ‘World Saving Stuff’. It had been approved immediately without comment.) He nodded, and put it back. “I will find someone for you. Now, to more important things! How have you been? Is there a Mr Star?”

They made small talk for a couple of hours, until Sasha had to get back. She’d missed this kind of thing, Sasha realised. If only she hadn’t gone to university and gotten into supernatural research, she could’ve spent her days drinking vodka with old men who asked intrusive questions about her family life, instead of trying to save the world from evil forces.

Eh, hindsight.

\-------------------

  
  


Basira finished the mind-numbing task of untangling Kyle’s rambling story and collated it with the other information she had. She nodded to herself, and she and Daisy went to visit Tim.

“We’re being manipulated,” Basira explained. “By the Lightless Flame.”

“Sounds about right,” Tim said. “How?”

“I’ve looked through Kyle’s report of his absolutely disastrous relationship with that Desolation girl. If he’s reporting on the things she said correctly, after Agnes’ death there was more than just a change in leadership. There was a proper schism. Half the cult just left, including the ones who set fire to my office. I went back, you know? Some of the cameras were still working. About an hour after they set fire to the place, some of your old buddies showed up, coming from two different directions, like you’d expect if they wanted to trap me inside.”

“The deserters saved your life,” Daisy concluded.

“Yeah. By setting the place alight early.”

“That’s sneaky,” Tim said. “The cult would probably think that one of their own got overeager and didn’t wait for the right time, so they’d be suspicious of each other. So the deserters are… what, protecting us while we wipe out the other half of the schism?”

“That’s my guess.”

“And they’ll probably kill us when we’re done?”

“Probably.”

“Fantastic,” Tim muttered. “Absolutely fucking fantastic.”

\---------------------

  
  


“Boy bands?” Jon asked. “Seriously?”

“ _Nineties_ boy bands.” Martin grimaced. “I thought we left Mmmbop behind two decades ago, but apparently not in our house.”

“Hanson? Not even the Backstreet Boys?” Jon shook his head. “My commiserations.”

“You like the Backstreet Boys?”

“No! I, I just think, if somebody is going to listen to boy bands, they may as well listen to the best of the lot.”

“You _do_ like the Backstreet Boys!”

“You cannot prove that.”

“You’re getting a Backstreet Boys album for your birthday,” Martin informed him. Then blushed. Ugh, Jon was dead; were they even supposed to do birthdays any more? It wasn’t like he could physically use anything they got him. Or eat cake. Or even blow out candles.

But Jon didn’t seem to notice. “Did you summon me just to complain about your housemate’s music choices?”

“Is… is that a problem? I mean, if you’d rather, rest, or whatever, I can – ”

“No, no. Just checking there’s no crisis. She ran out of Gerry’s, ah, recommendations, then?”

“She didn’t seem to like them much. Which I guess is a good thing? I mean, if she has her own likes and dislikes? I still don’t understand how she… you know… works.” _Or how you work_ , he didn’t say.

“I don’t understand how anyone ‘works’,” Jon shrugged.

Martin sipped his tea and eyed Jon. “How are you feeling, by the way? In general?”

“Uh, what?”

“You know, like… how are things going?”

“Martin, you already know how I’m doing. I only exist when someone in this office is talking to me. There’s not much else to catch up on.”

“You just seem…”

“Different?” Jon asked sardonically, glancing meaningfully at his semitransparent form.

“Happy.”

“Uh, what?”

“I mean… you always used to be… stressed, I guess? Standoffish and kind of…”

“If you’re talking about that slightly paranoid spell I had, I don’t think that can be considered indicative of my normal behaviour.”

“No, before that. And after. Just in general.”

“I wasn’t standoffish!”

“Yeah, you were.”

“Well, maybe a little. I was adjusting to a new job. And then there was Gertrude’s murder, and the apocalypse…”

“Tim said you were the same in research.”

“Oh. Well. My apologies if I came off that way.”

“That’s not what I… I just wanted to make sure things were, you know, okay.”

“‘Okay’ isn’t really a factor for me any more, Martin.”

“… Right. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, I just… just as a factual thing, being dead is… different.”

“Different how? I mean, if that’s a personal questions I – ”

“No, it’s fine, but I don’t think I can explain. I don’t think I could explain my experience to you any more than Mary could.”

“You’re not like Mary,” Martin said, surprised at the defensiveness in his own tone.

Jon just raised an eyebrow.

“Mary’s a monster,” Martin said. “You’re human, you’re just… dead.”

Jon didn’t respond to this right away. But after a while he said, “I think we’re all monsters these days, in one way or another.”

\------------------------

  
  


Georgie looked at her phone and sighed at the long line of texts that Melanie hadn’t responded to. She didn’t respond to texts, she didn’t pick up the phone, and so far as Georgie could tell she hadn’t been on Facebook. Should she go to the Institute and ask after her? Would that be pushy? Maybe she was totally fine and just needed her space. Or maybe something had happened again. Maybe she’d gotten trapped in another evil dimension, and needed help.

“It’s only been three days, Georgie,” she told herself. “Sometimes, people need space.”

But those people didn’t work somewhere where they were routinely attacked by supernatural forces.

No, she had to be fine. She worked in the archives, with other people. If something had happened, they’d have called her.

She had to be fine.

\-------------------------

  
  


Melanie had trouble focusing on her spreadsheet. What did Peter _want_ with her?

She didn’t know if Sasha could help her, or how, because she couldn’t contact her. She couldn’t contact anyone. Peter was obviously trying to isolate her, and if she reached out, she put whoever she spoke to in danger. Like that therapist. She needed to play along long enough to find out why.

Was this an excuse, not to get help? An excuse to stay in her little personal bubble and say it was for everyone’s safety? To pretend that doing nothing was helpful, that stagnation was progress?

No. She’d followed up on Dr Tolstoy and she was very definitely missing. This was a real danger, and even if it wasn’t… what did she have to lose by being cautious? A little time?

“Melanie.”

Melanie jumped at Peter’s voice right behind her. She gritted her teeth, bunching her hands into fists – why did he have to interrupt her right now?! – and heard him take a sudden step back.

“Well,” he said, sounding vaguely impressed. “I’ll just leave this here, shall I?”

A statement was placed next to her, and Peter left.

Fine. That was probably easier to concentrate on than the spreadsheet. Huh, a Dekker one; something about a haunted fairground?

Melanie pulled out her tape recorder and started to read.

\--------------------

  
  


_Isn’t it weird? Isn’t it strange?_

_Even though we’re just some strangers on this runaway train._

_We’ve been trying to find a place in the sun_

_We’ve lived in the shadows, but doesn’t everyone?_

  
  


Mary almost burst into tears at the pure poetry of the verse. These boys were geniuses, true poets and scholars of the human experience, and if she was going to better at being human, she had so much to learn from them. How were they not played constantly, everywhere? How did everyone not fall to their knees weeping at such succinct verse?

Perhaps they weren’t aware of the band. She should play Hanson at work, and share her discovery.


	92. Chapter 92

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world's worst mobile phone game is introduced.

Being dead was… strange. But not in any of the ways that Jon would have expected it to be.

The dead part, the idea of a permanent cessation of being, was something that had terrified him as a human when he’d been inclined to think too deeply about it, but that no longer bothered him. He was already dead; this part felt… cursory, like a cashier’s “have a nice day!” as you’re already walking out the door. The others, especially Martin, seemed far more bothered by the possible fragility of his page than he was, although it was also possible that the general feeling of cosmic wrongness that permeated his every moment had something to do with that. Either way, he was dead, and he hadn’t expected to adjust to something like that quite so quickly.

The inability to interact with things wasn’t much of an issue, either. He would have thought that this would be a frustrating problem for ghosts, but aside from occasionally forgetting, he hadn’t had much issue with it. The world wasn’t for him. Fine.

No, the things that really got to Jon were the sorts of things that he never would have considered in his living existence. The way how he only existed when somebody summoned him, so his afterlife wasn’t a smooth progression of time so much as a disjointed series of conversations with no bridging time between them – he’d discuss strategy with Sasha and then immediately go into a discussion with Martin about being the Archivist, but for them, days had passed. It was the way people spoke to him like he was somehow fragile, like his own death was a tragic secret they had to refrain from mentioning lest he break down in grief over himself. It was – and even Jon had to admit to himself that this was petty – seeing Martin in _his_ chair, in _his_ office. The strangely disparate focus in Sasha’s eyes as she constantly juggles a hundred tasks, Basira less casual and more focused, Mary’s careful gaze and behaviour that was far more normal than he remembered, and the way Tim, the one time he’d seen him, had seemed… happy, but with a wild recklessness about him that was somehow the opposite kind of self-destructive as his pre-Unknowing brooding anger.

So much had happened to these people without him. They were hauntingly familiar strangers now. And since he only existed for brief conversations, he had no hope of catching up.

He hadn’t left the office since Martin had framed him, but today, they’d brought him down into the tunnels. He glanced about at the full current archive crew (except Melanie, of course), lit by torches.

“Okay,” Sasha said, rubbing her hands together. “We’re all here.”

“Sure are,” said Basira. “What have you got on the Eyepocalypse?”

“You’re going to keep calling it that?” Martin asked.

She shrugged. “It’s Elias’ plan. It doesn’t deserve a dignified name. Honestly they all sound kind of stupid anyway. ‘The Unknowing’? Really?”

“The Last Feast sounds cool,” Mary said. “Doesn’t it?”

“So far as the ritual goes,” Sasha said, clearly attempting to get everyone back on track, “I don’t have anything. I only said that because it was a believable reason to get you down here if Elias is watching. He surely knows we’re against that, and we definitely do not want him to know about this.” She dramatically opened the laptop she’d brought and pulled something up on the screen. “This is Turtle Run.”

“Good lord,” Jon said. “That is the most chaotic game I’ve ever seen.”

“What does it have to do with turtles?” Mary asked.

“Those are Candy Crush sounds,” Basira said. “They stole those from Candy Crush.”

“All the assets are stolen,” Sasha said. “They’d have to be; it was made in less than four days.”

“How is it not, y’know, banned?” Martin asked. “From the… store, or whatever?”

“It’s not for sale. It’s privately hosted. I’ll send you guys links to play tonight.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Basira asked. “What kind of game even is it? I mean, I see the match 3 elements, but why is maths involved?”

“And what’s with the word jumble part down the bottom?” Mary asked. “I can see how it changes the score when you play with the letters, but it’s not… what are you trying to spell?”

“Nothing!” Sasha grinned. “So far as I can tell, the scores are pretty random. It’s possible to ‘die’ and use up one of your lives, but you get so many bonus life gems that I think you could just play indefinitely if you wanted. So far as game design, monetisation, or the social aspect goes, it’s all complete nonsense.”

“Aren’t they the most important parts of these kinds of games?” Martin asked, puzzled.

“I know this isn’t particularly relevant, Sasha,” Jon cut in, “but are you playing a phone-exclusive game on a laptop via an emulator because you refuse to buy a smartphone?’

“No comment,” she said. “Let me show you the social aspect of the game.” She clicked into a mostly concealed side menu, containing two buttons: ‘Match Friend’ and ‘Share A Puzzle’. She clicked ‘Share a Puzzle’ and selected her only friend in the game so far (herself), and the puzzle she’d been working on opened up in a separate window.

“So is that like giving gifts or whatever in Farmville?” Mary asked, confused. “Like, does either person get anything? I’m so confused.”

“Your taste in games is awful, Sasha,” Basira said. “Also, why are we hiding this from Elias?”

But Jon understood. “Because you can share puzzles with your friends. Oh. That is quite clever.”

“It is?”

Jon pointed at the word jumble portion of the puzzle. “Forty letters. Sent without suspicion because it’s a silly social game. This isn’t a new mobile game, it’s a messaging service, via a system too convoluted to track that no supernatural spy would look deep enough into it to notice that the letters are meaningless to the game. And because these games tend to become popular quickly and become addictive, there’s nothing suspicious about regularly sharing puzzles.”

Sasha nodded. “I had it made for Melanie, but I think we can get some use out of it, too. If we use a simple shift cipher, that should work. They’re easy enough to code or decode without writing anything down; just staring at the screen and matching gems for awhile. But it would look like nonsense to someone who isn’t looking for a message, like Elias.”

“This is perfect!” Martin said. “I knew playing all those facebook games at work would pay off someday. It makes this unsuspicious!”

“I’ve never played one,” Mary said.

“That’s okay, I’ll introduce it to you as a new human thing you’re trying out.”

“The difficult part,” Sasha said, “is getting this to Melanie. Basira, if you visit Tim, since he lives in the tunnels and all – ”

“Tim _lives_ in Smirke’s _tunnels_?” Jon asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why?!”

“Probably makes it harder for the Lightless Flame to kill him? I’ve long ago stopped questioning Tim’s life choices. Point is, you can explain this to him and Daisy without suspicion down there. And we can probably safely assume that Elias’ interest is in the archive employees, so Tim or Daisy can subtlely explain things to Georgie while Elias watches us. The whole point of this was to help Melanie stay in contact with Georgie while looking like she’s not in contact with anyone, but I have no idea how we’re going to secretly explain this to Melanie. We have to assume she’s being watched all the time, for… whatever Elias and Peter want her for.”

“Can the People’s Church help?” Jon asked. “How’s that going?”

“Nowhere,” Sasha sighed. “I can’t find anything in Richard’s movements or conversations that we can use to either coerce him, or get him to trust us.”

“We’re spying on him,” Martin pointed out. “Pretty good reason not to trust us.”

“They’re spying on us, too; they’re just worse at it. Anyway, spying is supposed to be our thing, right? We should get a free pass on that. We’re not making trouble with, with Peter Lukas for how a quarter of the library staff disappeared last week.”

“Wait, what?” Basira asked. “He vanished them?”

“We have to assume so.”

“To be fair,” Martin said, “the only reason we’re not making trouble with him over that is because we also want to stay in this dimension. Not because we think he has some kind of inherent right to do that. Any more than we do with the spying.”

“Fine, fine.” Sasha waved a hand dismissively. “Point it, nobody’s going to have anything to do with playing nice with us while they think we’re trying to end the world, so unless we’ve got something to hold over the People’s Church that they fear more than the Watcher’s Crown – ”

“Why not fake it?” Jon asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The Watcher’s Crown. Prepare for a fake ritual and have it ‘fail’. Then you and the People’s Church are in the same boat; waiting to build up energy again.”

“That’s a great idea!” Mary chirped.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Basira said.

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Jon asked, trying not to sound defensive.

“Well, firstly, there’s the fact that we’re relying on all those other people to stop the _actual_ Eyepocalypse, so getting them to let their guards down is probably a bad idea. Also, how dumb would we all feel if the ritual succeeded and we actually ended to world?”

“If a fake ritual accidentally succeeded?” Martin asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think that’s really possible. I mean, the other rituals took years and years of careful preparation, so…”

“Like how Elias has had years and years to carefully prepare? And hired all of us? And appointed you as Archivist?”

“… Okay, point.”

“Also, I hate to bring this up, but I don’t think we should be taking too many suggestions from Jon. Sorry, Jon.”

Jon shrugged. The annoyance he was vaguely aware of was a later problem.

“Why not?” Martin asked defensively. “Jon was pretty instrumental in saving the world once already.”

“And Jon’s dead. We don’t know what that thing is.”

“I’m right here,” Jon felt the need to point out.

“What do you mean you don’t know what – ?!”

“I mean,” Basira cut in, counting things off on her fingers, “we don’t know who bound him, we don’t know why he was sent to us, and oh yeah, we don’t have the faintest idea how that creepy death book even works. All we know is it can summon something that looks like Jon. Who says it is? There’s probably a way to make fake ghosts, or something.”

“I can’t believe you would – !”

“She’s got a point, Martin,” Jon said.

“No, she doesn’t! I think we’d be able to tell if you were Jon or, or some impostor!”

“You said yourself that I was different. That I wasn’t behaving like the Jon you knew.”

“I didn’t mean like that! Anyway, _you_ know who you are.”

“I think I’m Jon. But if I’m a fake, I have false memories, so I’d think that anyway.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to start getting suspicious of each other,” Martin grumbled.

“He’s right,” Mary said. “Where’s the love? It makes the world go round and round, you know.”

“Martin, please introduce her to another boy band,” Sasha said.

“No, you guys don’t understand. Hanson’s lyrics are very evocative; I brought some to play later in – ”

“I envy you right now, Jon,” Basira said. “Assuming you actually are Jon. To be dead, instead of working in that office.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Sasha’s eyes widened. “Wait. Mary. Oh my god.”

“What?”

“Boy bands, fine. But. But. What about the next level up?”

“What?”

Sasha put her hands on Mary’s shoulders and looked into her eyes very seriously. “Have you discovered My Chemical Romance yet?”

Basira was right, Jon reflected. Maybe it _was_ better to be dead.


	93. Chapter 93

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin has a bad time again.

In the end, Sasha solved the problem of discreetly informing Melanie by, well, making it her problem. There was no way around it; all she could do was compose an email for her in the tunnels and trust her to find some way to open it unobserved. She put the actual information as an attachment and just wrote “private” in the body of the email, just to warn her in case Melanie did open the email itself in her office, but she’d probably be quick enough on the uptake to not look at it at all until she was unobserved.

Then she went home, and got an early night for once.

\------------------

  
  


Melanie received a lot of emails every day. Peter’s email was forwarded to her, like pretty much all of his work – she wondered if he was drawing a salary and just dumping his workload on her. It wouldn’t surprise her. But the email from Sasha was one of many, and she had no problem letting her eyes glide right over it without opening it.

She worked late. She usually did. She liked the feel of the building at night; empty, but for the occasional footsteps of a janitor or other late worker lost in their own world. It was lonelier, somehow, than actually being alone in her van, with that particular tension in the air of several people being alone in close proximity, and that somehow made it safer, more calming. She got a lot more done at night.

In this case, it meant that she was going to be able to get down to the tunnels without anyone in the building noticing her.

She wasn’t sure if Elias was watching her. She had no way of telling. But just in case, she let her anger show, and eventually glared at the motivational poster in the wall, staring right into the photo model’s smiling eyes. “Leave me alone!” she snapped. “I’m trying to work!” Then she snatched up her laptop and stormed out, down towards the archives.

There. That could be his nonsuspicious excuse, if he were watching.

She really, really hoped she wouldn’t run into anyone, and as she made her way down, she didn’t. A cup of tea on Mary’s desk was still warm, but she must have just missed them, because she saw no one as she marched into Martin’s office and opened the trapdoor. A long ethernet cable snaked its way down – Sasha’s, probably. Right; there was no reception in the tunnels. Good thinking, Sasha.

She pulled the trapdoor closed and checked the email. Yeah; that should work. That should work just fine. It was a slow, cumbersome method of communication, but in some ways that was better – it would cut down on distracting chatter. She could work by herself, mostly, staying out of everyone’s way and letting them stay out of hers, but she’d have backup. She’d have Georgie.

This should work.

\------------------------

  
  


Martin stared at the Leitner in his hands.

In the two weeks since he’d run out of English pages, he’d flipped through it occasionally, just to check if he’d missed any. Or if any were in Polish. He kind of missed talking to new ghosts, learning who they were, learning what had happened to them. And he wanted to help them, of course. And now here he sat, staring at a page he’d seen several times before, a page that was in German, or something very much like it. But this was different to those other times.

He hadn’t been able to tell what it had said those other times.

He flipped through a few more pages. All readable. This was… very convenient, but also concerning. Had this happened to Jon? He glanced up at his page on the wall, ready to read it, but changed his mind. It was late, he shouldn’t be here – he needed to get out of the archives and go home. He kept getting attacked here; he wasn’t safe. Anyway, Mary probably wanted to get home and listen to the My Chemical Romance music that Sasha had given her, since the archive team had all voted to ban Mary’s music in the office until she bought herself some headphones. Yeah, they should leave right away.

He tucked the book into his bag. He could summon someone tonight and talk about the language thing with Jon in the morning.

As he and Mary headed into the night, he said, “I can’t stop thinking about what Basira said about Elias, the guy who we have to assume has the world-ending plan, having put us all here. About how he’s probably still planning his ritual, and we might enact it by accident.

“If it involves sacrificing you like she thinks, then that’s no problem,” Mary said confidently. “I can protect you.”

“What if it’s the opposite?”

“What?”

“What if he… what if I… Mary, being the Archivist is changing me.”

“Yes.”

“So what if it changes me into something that… that has different priorities? Mary, if… if you had to kill me to save the world from the Watcher’s Crown…”

“I really don’t think it’s going to come to that. You’re who you are, and your choices make who you become. That’s how this works.”

“But if it did. Would you kill me?”

“Yes. Didn’t we have this discussion over the Unknowing?”

“I… I guess we did. That’s very good to hear. Thank you.”

They took the underground in silence (there was little they could talk about on public transit without getting weird looks), then walked out into the cool night air. Their house was well-positioned, within sight of a convenience store.

“I’m going to drop in there and see if they have headphones,” Mary said.

Martin nodded. He was going to lock himself in his room and summon a ghost before going to sleep, and it’d be good to do it without the ghost’s dramatic monologue being backed by My Chemical Romance. “I’ll probably see you in the morning, then.”

“Good night!”

Martin headed for the house. It always looked kind of creepy at night. He was pretty sure it was technically abandoned, or something, although they’d never had problems with water, electricity or, after he’d convinced Mary to get it, internet. She had some kind of weird anonymity field that he didn’t understand, but it sure saved on rent.

Come to think of it, Mary couldn’t be the only nonhuman monster out there just trying to be a person. That creepy taxidermy place had been run by creepy taxidermy people. Were there people like Mary out there being the world’s best spies? Maybe.

The streetlight ahead of him was broken. Martin supposed that there probably weren’t too many abandoned houses to move into in nice neighbourhoods. Just as he had the thought, the one behind him winked out, too. Ugh.

Then the lights of the convenience store behind him went out, and it was suddenly very dark.

Wait a minute. Where were the stars? Why couldn’t he see any stars?

Before he could reach his phone, arms he couldn’t see were dragging him away, and the oily darkness clinging to his skin filled his mouth and nose until he couldn’t scream.

\-------------------

  
  


Tim sat bolt upright in bed and swore.

Basira and Daisy would be on the plane to America. No help. He crawled out of the old pipe that was the nearest tunnel entrance to his home and, as soon as he had phone recpeption, tried to call Martin – no answer. Sasha – no answer. He didn’t have anyone else’s phone number. Dammit.

Well, Sasha’s place was within running distance. He sprinted all the way, ignoring the strange looks of passers-by, and hammered on her door until she opened it, bleary-eyed, kitchen knife in hand.

“Tim?” She lowered the knife. “It’s three in the – ”

He pushed his way into her house. “I just had a dream about being on a cruise ship that was also a whale.”

“That’s nice for you? I have work in – ”

“No, Sasha; listen. It’s the first time I’ve dreamed of something other than fire and screaming, melting wax people in _months_.”

Suddenly, Sasha was wide awake. “Oh, fuck. Martin.”

“He’s not picking up his phone. Do you have Mary’s number?”

“Y-yeah. I’ll call her.”

Tim had left his axe at home. He went to Sasha’s kitchen to raid it for knives while she called Mary. He knew that arming up was pointless, that their hurry was pointless. He knew that Martin must already be dead.

He’d had the nightmares without Martin in them, plenty of times. Both of them had such chaotic sleep schedules that it was a bit of a crapshoot as to whether his dreams of Jude Perry’s screaming, accusatory face melting as he caught fire was also accompanied with Martin’s piercing glare. But not having the nightmares at all, well.

“He’s not there,” Sasha said, distressed. “Mary last saw him outside on the way home, and assumed he was in bed, but he’s not there. He could’ve disappeared at any time since then.”

“No corpse?” Tim asked, ignoring Sasha’s wince. “Okay, we… we have to find him. And deal with whoever did this.”

“He might be alive,” Sasha said, without conviction.

“Uh-huh. Who are our suspects?”

“Absolutely everyone, I guess. I’m going to see if there are CCTV cameras in the area. Mary’s on her way here. The extra caffeinated coffee is on the top shelf.”

Tim nodded and went to put the coffee machine on. Time to get to work.

\-------------------------

  
  


Martin was in a box.

He was grateful for the box. It was something to ground him. It was plenty big enough for him to lie comfortably, and the rough wood reminded him that something existed in the infinite blackness. He tried not to move, lest he startle the box into nonexistence.

He could see nothing, of course, but he could hear things, if he concentrated. He could hear occasional footsteps and giggles and singing and sobbing out in the darkness, of the things that lurked there. According to what he could hear, he wasn’t in a box, no matter what his sense of touch said; he was in some kind of open space. He tried his best to believe his sense of touch, worried that if he believed the darkness instead, the wood under him – the only real thing that had come with him – would be gone.

He considered shouting out to the other lost things in the dark, but he knew that would be a bad idea. Darkness filled his lungs with every breath, and he had the distinct impression that while it was sustaining him right now, it could just as easily drown him. If he breathed too hard, if he tried to shout, if he disturbed it in any way, perhaps it would. So he breathed slowly and gently, like an asthmatic at the start of an attack trying to get enough air without their lungs closing completely.

The darkness around him wasn’t an absence of light. Martin had never been afraid of an absence of light. It was the kind of malevolent darkness that haunted a child’s closet at night, and opposition of light and information and reality itself. The kind of dark that robbed someone not just of being able to see something, but of the surety of what was there at all. A dark that turned any little nook or corner into a space large enough to house the kinds of monsters that couldn’t live in a real world, where the light would make them known and burn them away.

But nothing could be known here. Not even the box. Not even Martin himself, who was missing… something.

Martin pressed his cheek to the rough wood to remind himself it was there, and breathed.


	94. Chapter 94

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha gets stuff done.

The first thing Sasha did was look for Martin’s phone via the tracking app she’d secretly installed on it after he became the Archivist. The phone was, frustratingly, off. Whenever the government needed to track someone they made it easy, but whenever _she_ needed to do it…

She sent Mary to acquire the tape of the convenience store’s external security camera. After digging through her own Miscellaneous Hardware Cupboard for a bit, she admitted defeat and sent Tim to acquire something capable of playing the tape.

She carefully avoided asking him where he got the VCR player at this time of night as they quickly set it up, plugged in the tape and fast forwarded through several hours until Mary and Martin walked into view.

As always, Mary’s face was clear and normal on the tape, but as unmemorable as ever the moment Sasha looked away. And Martin was… well. Cameras seemed to love him, now. Even though the focus and direction of the camera didn’t change, from the moment he walked into view it seemed like it was focused on him, that it was following him.

Okay, so don’t ask Martin to ever shoplift stuff. Good to know. Except it didn’t matter any more, did it? Because Martin was… because the nightmares had stopped.

Oh, god. This here, this footage… this was the last any of them would see of Martin being alive.

Mary wordlessly handed Sasha a tissue, and she cleared her eyes enough to watch Martin wave goodbye to Mary and… walk out of view, towards home.

Useless.

Sasha swore quietly.

“Look,” Tim said, pointing at the camera, at some random random guy in a beanie walking past.

“That’s our People’s Church guy,” Mary said. “He follows us home from the Underground every night.”

“So he’d probably know what happened, right? If we – ” Tim stopped talking, leaning forward. Sasha saw it, too. The People’s Church disciple had turned, giving the camera a clear view of his face.

Except his face wasn’t there. A black smudge obscured it, moving with him.

It wasn’t weird for the servants of various entities to show up strangely on recorded footage, of course. The Institute’s own problems trying to digitally record statements was evidence enough of that. But the People’s Church members had always shown up perfectly fine before. So what was up with this guy?

“Where’s their leader right now?” Tim asked as the man on screen left the store.

Sasha checked. “His phone’s off. Or he’s done something to stop it broadcasting its location to me. Do you think he knew we were spying on them this whole time?” Oh god, how embarrassing would that be? To have been played by the People’s Church, who couldn’t even spy properly themselves?

“I managed to outwit the cult I went up against,” Tim said casually, like he couldn’t help rubbing it in.

“Oh yeah? Who are you guys hiding from right now, then?”

“Not relevant.”

“We can see if anyone’s still watching the Institute,” Mary suggested. “Perhaps interrogate one of them? Oh! Elias might know.”

“It takes days to arrange to see someone in jail,” Sasha said. “And it’s the middle of the night. I know we’re not, we’re not exactly on a time limit or anything here, but – ”

“I might be able to get in,” Mary said. “Prisons put a lot of people in a small space; some of them are bound to have fear I can use. Or we can just wait for him to call on whoever he picks as the new Archivist.”

Sasha hadn’t even thought of that. Mary couldn’t do it, and Melanie probably wasn’t going to be his pick, which left it between her and Basira, and Basira was never going to be talked into a full time contract, so –

Unless it was going to be Melanie. Unless that was the point of whatever Peter was doing with her. Had Elias arranged for Martin’s death? No, no; the People’s Church wouldn’t work with him. Maybe she was being set up to replace him after someone got him inside the Institute to sacrifice him, and the People’s Church had killed him to prevent that, meaning that so long as the Watcher’s Crown was on the table they were just going to keep –

She was getting off topic. And making a lot of baseless assumptions. One thing at a time.

She should figure out as much information as she could, and let Basira parse it. Basira was good at that.

“I have to get to the Institute,” she said. “They have better internet than me.”

“I’ll try to get in the jail,” Mary said.

“And I’ll see if I can find a People’s Church member who might want to chat with us,” Tim said.

So they split up.

Sasha went to the archives and got herself set up. The stupid, useless Institute, sitting here scavenging second-hand terror from other powers… laziness, pure laziness. Stuck in a previous century. If you wanted to watch people nowadays, if you wanted to track them and find their weaknesses and secret shames, you didn’t need confessions or testimonies or eyes, even. A person’s most shameful secrets were in their internet search history or text message records. Their location was in their tracking data, their house layout was in their robot vaccuum, their most treasured and intimate conversations happened near their Alexa or baby monitor or voice-controlled entertainment system. The better off someone was, the more able they were to participate in the virtual world, the less of them they left in the purely physical one.

The Institute was woefully unfit for purpose, in the modern world. But at least it had good internet. Sasha’s home internet seemed to have more and more problems as time went on that nobody could figure out, but the Institute’s internet had always done exactly what she needed it to.

It was _easy_ to hack into the police CCTV database. She certainly wasn’t going to run anything suspicious on their computers, so she got to work downloading the database to the Institute data storage. Out of habit, she took some of the usual precautions, but didn’t bother with full invisibility, which would slow the download to a crawl. If the police did notice someone had copied the footage (they wouldn’t) and bothered to follow up who (they wouldn’t), Peter Lukas could deal with it.

The download was going to take forever, so while she waited, she went to question the one other person who might know something about this.

\----------------------

  
  


Jon only had to take one look at Sasha’s face to know immediately that something was wrong.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Martin didn’t get home last night,” she said, not even looking up from the laptop she’d shoved everything off his – off Martin’s – desk to make room for. “We can’t find any trace of him, and… and Tim’s stopped having nightmares.”

“And by, by nightmares you mean – ”

“Yeah. Statement nightmares. Did that ever happen to you? Is there anything that might stop the nightmares?”

“Not.. not until… I mean, even in the coma I had the nightmares. They never stopped for me for as long as I was…”

“Alive,” Sasha finished.

“But we don’t know that’s what happened!” Jon added, surprised at his sudden panic. Panic was a strange thing to feel at a distance. He shouldn’t feel this passionate about something as simple as death; everyone died. He’d died. But there was a world of difference between everyone dying, and _Martin_ dying. Only one of those things was okay. “Maybe this is, is something he can do now? Stop the nightmares? Maybe he tried something, and didn’t mention it beforehand in case it didn’t work, and – ”

“And coincidentally vanished the same night and switched off his phone?” Then her eyes widened. “Wait.” She typed rapidly at the computer. Jon leaned back to peer at the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“Downloading CCTV footage, mostly,” she said. “We’re pretty sure the People’s Church did it. I’ve taken clear pictures from Institute footage of the People’s Church members who keep hanging around our building, and with those I can run the police CCTV through some facial recognition software and get a map of their movements over time. And I can cross-reference that with the location data from phones around London, and then get a pretty good estimate of which phones at least some of them own, and then I can track them, in a very crude kind of way, and get a good estimate of where they are. But if you mean what I’m doing right now, with this window here, I’m looking at Martin’s phone history to see when exactly I lost – aha! See that? He had it on for most of the way home, then suddenly… off. That’s good news!”

“… Is it?”

“Yes. Who turns their phone off a couple of houses down from their own? That must be where he was attacked. And people don’t usually take their victim’s phone and turn it off, either, right? They’d just ditch it. I’d still be getting a signal if they ditched it. It’s possible he struggled and it was broken, but… these people worship the Dark.”

“Okay, so…?”

“So, what if something about whatever they’re doing blocks mobile phone signals? Stops them from talking to the towers? Richard’s phone is dark to me, too, and it seemed so weird that he’d turn that off. Oh, this is great news. I can use this to find whatever the hell they’re doing, and what they need Martin’s b-body for.”

“Well, the Circus wanted mine for the skin, so as long as they’re not skinning him for a ritu – ” Jon stopped talking, and he and Sasha both glanced at Jon’s page on the wall.

“He didn’t have that book of the dead on him, did he?”

Sasha checked its usual drawer. “It’s not here, so I’m going with probably? But that doesn’t… I mean, did they…?” she gestured at the page.

“I don’t know. How would that benefit them? That book’s clearly an End artefact, I don’t…”

“I guess we can ask them when we bust this whole thing open. It can’t be their ritual, right? I was so sure their ritual had already failed.”

“Maybe you were wrong. Or maybe it’s a last-ditch effort, trying to get in before the Eye, hoping they still have enough power.” And he might still be alive, right? The Circus had kidnapped him well in advance. And, and sure, he’d still had the dreams but…

“Oh, that was fast! I expected that download to take hours. It should be illegal, how good the internet is here.” She started typing. “If we’re lucky, I can get a handful of phones.”

“And then you’ll know where they are.”

“More importantly, I’ll know when they’re not anywhere.”

“What?”

“I don’t have access to Martin’s phone. I don’t have access to Richard’s phone. If these phones suddenly drop out, too, that’s pretty strong evidence that it’s a Dark-related problem… or at the very least that they switch them off going to a certain place, which is just as good, because if I keep losing access to all the phones at the same place – ”

“The dark spot tells you where their base of operations is,” Jon finished.

“Exactly!” Sasha grinned. “I love smartphones! When other people own them, anyway.”

“Indeed.” Jon wondered if he should tell her that she wasn’t running any software. That her laptop screen had been black the whole time.

No, best not to distract her. Any disturbing revelations like that could wait until they’d found out exactly what had happened to Martin.


	95. Chapter 95

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim is tired of being nice, Tim wants to go apeshit.

The woman’s name was Maria Hein. Tim knew where she lived, because she’d had some ongoing problem with one of the Lightless Flame that had eventually burgeoned into a miniature faction war that had resulted in him helping Jude burn down their church.

She knew Tim from seeing him lighting fire to her church as she fled in terror. So she didn’t respond positively to him jimmying open her front door lock with a kitchen knife and forcing his way inside.

He ducked the lamp thrown at his head. “Hey! I’m not – hey! Look, would you stop screaming?” The footstool caught him across the shoulder as she fled to another room. He followed. “I just want – calm down, alright? Oh, come on, do you even know how to throw a knife? I didn’t even have to duck that. No, at… at least use a proper knife. Look, I just want to talk, alright? Can we talk?” He held up both hands, a gesture that probably would’ve worked better if he’d thought to put his own knife down first. A coffee maker was thrown at his head, and shattered against the wall.

“Get out!” Maria screeched, finally closing her hand around something useful – a cleaver.

“Um, no?” Tim made to step around the shattered glass of the coffee maker, then decided that getting closer would be more threatening, and stayed where he was, in the kitchen’s only doorway. She looked scared anyway, for some reason. “Look, I’m just here to find out what the hell you did to the Archivist, alright? He’s… he was… a friend. And the arseholes who took him out are gonna be chopped up into tiny little pieces, so if that wasn’t _you_ , you don’t have anything to worry about. Just tell me who and where my target is, and I’ll be out of here. Who killed the Archivist?”

“You should be thanking us! You idiots, allying with the Eye? Do you really think they’ll spare you any mercy if they bring the world under their gaze? Our kind would suffer more, yes, but you’re shooting yourselves in the foot. You’ll give up your chances to scour the Earth just to spite us? Idiots!”

“Wow, okay, that’s a lot of very out of date information you’re running with there. I’m no longer with the… I don’t know what’s between you guys and the Lightless Flame any more but the Institute isn’t – no, you know what, I’m not getting into this right now. I’m here to avenge my friend, and I’ll do so against you unless you _tell me who killed him_.”

“I don’t know! I wasn’t part of any of that!”

“Well, from the way you’re talking you clearly knew about it, so you’re involved in some capacity, which sucks for you, doesn’t it?” He stepped forward. “The world will be better off with one less creepy Dark cultist in it, anyway.”

Maria flinched back, raising her cleaver. She obviously had no idea how to fight with it. Tim stepped forward again.

Then he stopped. “Do you smell smoke?”

The fire erupted behind him. He felt the surge of heat on his back, hot as the wax museum exploding around him, hot as the exploding basement in his nightmares taking the lives of the people who had, in their own rough way, helped him, trusted him. But he was already running for the window, scooping Maria in his arms, leaping through the glass and rolling across the grass and to his feet, as the flames claimed the kitchen.

“That was a lot more professional than usual,” he panted. “I think they were actually trying to kill us.”

Maria swung the cleaver at his face. He broke her wrist; she dropped the cleaver and fled into the night. The flames had robbed him of his night sight, making her impossible to see as the shadows claimed her.

Fuck.

“Well, well, well. Timothy Stoker, isn’t it?” A man strode from the shadows, bottom of his long trenchcoat fluttering in the night wind. His face was lit harshly by the roaring inferno, making the details hard to make out. Embers drifted across the grass between them. “Finally, the little puppy sticks his head aboveground without the protection of his big mama dog or her annoying mistress.”

Tim stared.

“So,” the man continued, “finally, we can – ”

“Who the fuck are you?” Tim asked.

“Ah, how rude of me. I am the one pulling your strings on your mad little rampage through – ”

“You interrupted a job! Now my target’s run off! How am I supposed to find her now, huh? She was hardly kind enough to leave a forwarding fucking address!”

The man paused awkwardly at this. “Uh. That little shadow woman?” He tried a sneer. “She doesn’t matter. More importantly, your crusade has been – ”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re from that other flame cult who left our flame cult because of the failure of the Agnes thing, now we’re of no further use to you and you think I’m vulnerable alone, I don’t care. My friend is dead and you’re standing in the way of my revenge, and since my last revenge rampage involved copious amounts of C4 I suggest you get the fuck out of my way!”

“Um. How did you know about us?”

“From drinking way too many White Russians with a very adorable cleaner. I don’t have time for this.”

“Very well. Die quickly then.” The man raised his hand. Maria’s cleaver in one hand, Sasha’s knife in the other, Tim rolled sideways to put him off balance and then leapt forward. Blades bit into wax, and the pair fell to the ground.

It was all going quite well until Tim’s shirt burst into flames.

He screamed and rolled on the ground, trying to put it out. The man probably could’ve killed him at that moment. But he didn’t. Tim wasn’t surprised. The thing about these cultists was, they liked to take everything from you, so when you had nothing to lose but your life, they liked you to know in advance that you’d lost it. If they were going to kill you, they preferred to do it slow. Even when they were teaching him, Tim had found that pathetic and inefficient; sure, let the prey feel fear in the pursuit, use that to lead them into the trap, but once you’re ready for the kill, be quick about it. Else they have a chance to bite back.

Tim bit back. Specifically, he lay on his back, pulled both knees to his chest (ignoring the flames), and rabbit-kicked the guy in the nuts.

It wouldn’t save him, but at least he had the satisfaction of watching the man double over in pain as he raised his hand once more. Tim prepared to die.

And then half the man’s face disappeared with a roar, and he dropped to the ground.

The roar hadn’t sounded like Daisy’s gun, so Tim couldn’t place it until the strange woman leapt the garden fence with a shotgun in her arms. An old man ran over with a fire extinguisher and put Tim out as the woman trotted up at a more leisurely pace, inspected the body, and held a hand out to help Tim up.

“He dead?” she asked.

“Probably,” Tim said. “I always take their heads off to be sure. I don’t know if that kills them, but it stops them from moving, so same difference.” Perhaps Tim was overcautious – Agnes had been killed with a simple hanging. But the last thing he wanted was to kill something, only to have if jump right up and try to incinerate him.

“Yeah, we bin doing that, too,” the old man said, tossing the extinguisher aside. “You got the axe, Jule?”

“You had the axe.”

“Did not.”

“I have a cleaver,” Tim said, crouching down to cleave the guy’s head off. He wasn’t really sure what to do with the head afterward. He couldn’t exactly keep it as a trophy; it hadn’t been his kill. Bury it, maybe? “So this isn’t the first cultist you’ve taken out, then?”

“Far from it,” said ‘Jule’, wrinkling her nose in a way that Tim wouldn’t call ‘adorable’, but only because that seemed like a fantastic way to get a load of buckshot to the face. “Chased these guys all up and down America, then they lead us right back home to good old England. I’m Julia, by the way. The old man is Trevor.”

“Tim. Thanks for the rescue. My partners just went to America to track these guys down, so that’s a fun coincidence.”

“They’ll be disappointed. I’m pretty sure we cleared out the ones who didn’t run back here. But who knows; America’s a huge place. You’re hunting something else right now though, arentcha?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to track down the bastards who murdered my friend.”

“Monsters?”

“Do evil cultists who tried to bring about the apocalypse with their supernatural Dark powers count as monsters?”

“I’d say they do.”

“Then yeah. Monsters.”

“Right then,” Trevor said. “Gimme my gun back, Jule. Let’s go get some cultists.” He eyed Tim. “I got a spare shirt you can borrow, if you want.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Julia said quickly. “It’s not a cold night, and look, he’s barely even burned.”

Tim flicked off the charred bits of cloth that used to be a shirt. “You can build a tolerance to fire, it turns out. Took all the skin off this arm awhile ago; look, it’s not even scarred.” He flexed. Julia watched intently, checking that he was telling the truth about the scarring no doubt, and nodded appreciatively.

Trevor cleared his throat. “The cultists?”

“Right. Well, I have the address of their local leader. He’s probably not home, but if we investigate there…”


	96. Chapter 96

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary makes a discovery.

For Mary, breaking into a prison would be quite difficult. Infiltrating places full of people trained to be suspicious of and aggressive toward unusual people was always hard; she could never quite get the fear leverage she needed. The last time she’d tried anything like this had been acquiring tapes from a police evidence locker years ago, for Jon, and breaking into a police station was far easier than a prison.

But she, unlike a human, wasn’t limited to being Mary. And there were ways, if she did it right. For beings like her, the rules of the universe were built of human fears and concepts; all she had to do was make getting in the prison the path of least natural resistance. Trying to be someone who the guards wouldn’t suspect would be a waste of time.

Trying to be someone who the prisoners would be afraid of would be much easier.

It had been so long since she’d done this. Would she even remember how everything worked?

She stood near the high prison fence and let the fear wash over her, spinning it into a new mask. A guard’s uniform. Big, broad shoulders, a massive frame; physically imposing with a hard jaw and a hard stare. The prison was full of prisoners who’d been beaten and abused by guards who’d faced no repercussions.

And Francis Knott, prison guard, walked right through the main door.

Nobody stopped him as he wandered the halls, looking for the places where the fear of something like him was strongest. He’d bash his truncheon on doors to make the prisoners inside jump and stare at them with sharklike, inhuman eyes and watch them struggle to comprehend the thing before them, that they could sense wasn’t quite human enough to hear reason, or to predict the actions of. The more afraid they were, the longer he would stare, leaving several prisoners in the midst of a panic attack.

Getting to Elias was going to be trickier. The prisoners in his block were better treated, and while he was sure they’d experienced some casual cruelty, they were unlikely to have the kind of fear that Francis the Prison Guard could exploit. Luck might be enough. If not, he’d need a new mask.

Luck was enough, as it turned out. The guard on the door saw his prison uniform and just buzzed him in. He didn’t even need to use a keycard or anything!

Finding Elias was easy. The man opened one sleepy eye, stared at the guard lurking outside his door, and said, “Mary. How can I help you? It really is _very_ early.”

Francis froze. Not because he was surprised that Elias had recognised him (the man was a powerful servant of the Eye, he could presumably recognise something he’d watched work in his building for so long no matter what mask it wore), not because he’d called him Mary (humans were like that), but because he was _right_. Francis was – Mary was – he wasn’t Francis, she was Mary, wearing a mask.

Francis broke.

Mary pushed her hair back with a trembling hand and met Elias’ gaze.

Elias, for his part, seemed completely unaware that anything unusual had happened. He looked at her unsurprised, as if he expected she’d changed form voluntarily, like that character Mystique from those comics Tim had tried to get her into awhile ago.

 _There's no point in beating around the bush_ , Mary thought. “How did Martin die?”

That got Elias’ attention. He leapt to his feet and rushed to the door. “What?! When did that happen?”

Mary stepped back. “Um, last night? I thought you watched – ”

“Hold on.” Elias focused on something in the middle distance for awhile, his face a mask of concentration. Mary waited, until finally, he said, “Are you certain he’s dead?”

“Isn’t he? Can you see him?”

“No. But there are many places in this world shielded from my sight, as I am sure you are perfectly aware. Just because he cannot be found does not mean that he is dead.”

“Tim’s not having the nightmares.”

“Ah. That is… not a fantastic sign. However, I can tell you with a high level of confidence that the Archivist is not dead.”

“Martin’s alive?”

“There is a living Archivist. Either it is Martin Blackwood, or somebody else has managed to take the role without my knowledge, which is extremely unlikely.”

“But not impossible?”

“Yesterday I would have called it impossible. However, despite what you and your colleagues might think, I am not omniscient, and there are things about the Archivist position that I do not entirely understand.”

“So you can’t be certain, but Martin is very likely to be alive.”

“That would be my best guess, yes. Of course my options of investigation are somewhat limited.”

Mary swallowed, and nodded. She hoisted the broken shards of Francis back in place, and left.

She was honestly surprised that she managed to get out of the prison under such a flimsy disguise.

\--------------------------

  
  


Fuck.

Elias had gathered a large vocabulary of invectives over the years, but only ‘fuck’ carried the right tone for this particular situation. _Fuck._

Martin had better be alive. He’d invested so many resources in this! He’d had to trick, to buy, to leverage so many favours to get him marked, and he was so close now! The gamble with Peter alone was a completely useless rick to his own life if he didn’t have an Archivist ready who could survive the Lonely, not to mention the effort of tracking down that book.  If he had to start all over again at this late stage, he’d… 

Do it, he supposed. He’d find the one who’d stolen the position, use or replace them as appropriate… he’d have to kill all the assistants, of course; they were too close to figuring things out, it’d be too dangerous…

But hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. He had to trust in the universe. He had to trust in the archival staff.

For now, Elias could only do what he did best – wait, and watch.

\---------------------

  
  


Sasha hung up the phone.

“Mary spoke to Elias,” she told Jon. “Apparently, he thinks Martin is still alive.”

Jon almost faded out of existence with relief. “Yes! Good! Then we need to rescue him. Has your computer thing told you anything yet?”

“I’ve got four phones that I think belong to People’s Church members, but I  won’t get any data until I gain or lose their signals.  That’s assuming these guys even go near whatever they’re doing; we don’t know how many people are involved in this. ” Ugh, they couldn’t just wait! Martin might be in danger right now! 

“ Can’t you look at where the phones have been in the past, see who they’re close to a lot, see if they congregate with other phones, and get more phones that way?”

God, she forgot how tech illiterate Jon was, sometimes. “I can’t just look at the histories of the phone locations for all the phones in London. I’m not the government.”

“But didn’t you already do that, though? When you cross-referenced them with the CCTV footage?”

… Huh. She supposed her software had done that. But that shouldn’t be possible; how had it…?

Jon interrupted her thoughts. “Can’t you just do that again, but cross-reference it with the phones you have?”

“I… I don’t know. I don’t think the software’s designed for that, but…” poking around a bit, she found the options she wanted. Apparently it _was_ designed to do that. She sat back.

“Did it work?” Jon asked.

She gestured at the software running on the screen. “It’ll take a minute. In the meantime…” she pulled up a map, and put in the current locations of the cultists whose phones she did have.

“What are we looking at?” Jon asked.

Sasha frowned at him. “You’ve been dead so long you’ve forgotten what a map looks like?”

“Right! Ah, just… distracted. Worried about Martin.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

\-------------------------------

Breaking into Richard’s second floor apartment window took rather longer than it should have. The window had been painted over and painted shut, and there was simply no way to break in without leaving obvious signs. In the end, Tim decided he didn’t care, and simply broke it.

Which turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, because on the other side of the pain, Richard had stuck several layers of newspaper, resulting in an unexpectedly tough papier-mache.

He kicked his way through, Julia and Trevor following. The apartment was, as he’d expected, dark. Every window was painted and papered, all the light globes had been removed. Even the  light in the refrigerator was broken, and any appliance that had a power light was unplugged . The three intruders swept the place with the lights on their phones, looking for anything useful.

N othing. No scrawled notes with clear addresses, no outdated phones with answering machines that contained a useful message. Tim resented all the books and movies that had lied to him over the years.

His phone rang, and he almost dropped it. After a brief conversation with Mary, he hung up and turned to his companions. “Good news. It’s possible my friend might still be alive. This is no longer a revenge mission; it’s a rescue mission. You guys up for that?”

“Makes no difference on our end,” Julia shrugged.

“Always better to be able to save an innocent along the way,” Trevor added.

Probably best not to mention the whole eldritch nightmare monster thing, Tim decided. But this did mean that it was a lot more important that they find Martin as soon as possible.

He just wished he knew how.

“ There’s nothin’ here,” Julia said. “We can keep scouring, but I hope you’ve got a backup plan.”

“This was my backup plan. But we’re in luck, I have a backup for my backup.” He called Sasha.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sash. We’re at Richard’s place and – ”

“Tim? Whose phone are you calling from?”

“Uh, mine?”

“No, you’re not.”

He looked at the phone in his hand for a second. Or the screen of it, which was the only part visible in the dark apartment. “Yes, I am.”

“Huh. Your phone’s showing up dead to me. I can’t find it on the network.”

“… Sash, did you install tracking software on my phone?”

“Tim, did you pretend to be dead for months and create a situation where I might feel the need to keep tabs on your safety?”

“You can’t keep playing that card forever.”

“Can and will.  Anyway, it’s not just the software that’s not working. I can’t get anything of your phone from the towers. Where did you say you were?”

“Uh, Richard’s apartment. A couple of friends and I broke in.”

“Anything useful?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’ve got an idea. I need you to leave, pick a direction, and start walking. Or driving. Or whatever.  Stay on the line, and  I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“Um, okay. Why?”

“They’ve got some kind of aura of darkness thing going on. I was going to try to find it based on their phones, but that might take days. I can do the same thing with yours a lot faster.”

“ You got it.” Hopefully, that cultist who’d tried to kill him earlier that morning hadn’t brought friend s . Getting attacked on the street mid-call would be awkward.


	97. Chapter 97

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary gets philosophical again.

Melanie woke up at six thirty in the morning with an irritating Turtle Run notification blinking on her phone.

**TheAdmiral’sLady has sent you a puzzle!**

Well, that was quick. She opened the puzzle and glanced down at the letter component.

LVHYHUBWKLQJRNDBKRZDUHBRX

They were using a cipher with a shift of 3 to encode the messages, so it was time consuming to decode the message while randomly switching around little farm animals to match 3, but not hard. What was she supposed to say to a message like that? She couldn’t exactly give any kind of detailed rundown on what was happening, her suspicions about Peter’s plans, how she felt…

And Georgie didn’t need to be troubled by that, anyway. It was best that she kept her as distant as possible. For Georgie’s safety. If she started poking around and Peter vanished her…

She progressed the puzzle a bit, and replaced the letter jumble with four simple letters: ILQH.

Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.

\---------------------

  
  


Mary knew what the problem was. She knew why she was stuck in the mask, like a lobster that couldn’t shed and would crush itself in its tightening shell. She’d watched this exact thing, or the opposite of it she supposed, happen to humans; watched them make their choices and draw their fear tight around themselves and make it part of their very natures and then be _surprised_ at the things it turned them into. She’d thought it was impossible for her. She couldn’t create power like that, she was at the mercy of their power, so her experimenting would have no consequences, right?

She’d worked hard at building an identity, but she hadn’t considered that she might succeed. Masks were fake;  parts to play, roles to fulfil in the great dance, people to be for awhile until they weren’t needed and it was time to be someone else. And she’d tried to make Mary as close to possible as a real human, knowing full well that Mary could never actually be human, any more than Martin or Sasha could become dolphins.

She’d been right. Mary would never be anything close to a human.

But somehow, she had become a person.

Mary has once watched a young cat, overtaken with the joy of climbing, climb higher and higher into a tree until it was far up on a fragile top branch, where it suddenly realised its precarious position and froze up, unable to get down as the wind shook it back and forth. That was how she felt, as the prison receded into the distance. This shouldn’t be possible, this…

But of course it was possible. She knew exactly what had happened. And like all those humans she’d rolled her eyes at in the past, it was entirely predictable, and entirely her fault.

She had been Mary for years without pause. She had surrounded herself with humans who  had gotten to know Mary, who had become close to her, who cared about her,  who helped to build her . She unnerved them, of course, she made them afraid; that was what she was for. But they had trusted her and stuck by her and believed in her, regardless.

She’d surrounded herself with humans who believed in her, and sat in that belief for years.  _ Of course _ they would make her real.  She probably should’ve listened more carefully when people spoke of the Power of Friendship, no matter how sarcastic they always sounded. 

A nd now she felt…

She didn’t know how she felt about this. Scared, she supposed. A sharp and immediate fear. Not truly powerful, like human fear, but she supposed that they probably felt something close to this, being them. A threat to her mask felt like a threat to her existence, somehow, like if Mary was destroyed then the monster left behind would be somebody different, which was true, but had never mattered before. And if Mary was important, then that made her so much more vulnerable. It made the world so much more dangerous.

She couldn’t be the first one to experience this, right? Humans had been afraid of Strangers since… since forever, surely. Other beings like her had existed for a long time, and some of them must have gone through this. She couldn’t be a lone thing, a unique thing, an alien thing with no other examples to learn from, to understand –

Mary stopped walking to burst into hysterical laughter. This was ridiculous.  _ She was afraid of a stranger. And that stranger was herself. _

No; she was thinking about this wrong.  _ I am afraid of a stranger, _ she thought. She used the pronoun when speaking to people, to avoid confusion, but for the first time, it felt right to think it.  _ I am afraid of a stranger, and that stranger is myself.  _

_Perhaps I should take the time to get to know me better._

\------------------------

  
  


As soon as Tim’s mobile phone existed on Sasha’s radar again, she hung up, stuck her Institute-issued sim card in her phone and called him back using that, so the Institute could pay for the hour or two of call time this was going to take. He told her about the two new friends he’d picked up as she zigzagged him th r ough the London streets, marking on her map wherever she lost his location, until they had a rough circle  inside of which, according to her software, phones didn’t exist any more. 

“Okay,” she said. “If you go South, you’ll run into Laurel Avenue. The dead centre of this area is one of the first three houses on your right. No, I don’t know which one. This isn’t exactly a high-resolution border-divining method here. Okay, good luck; and  _ please _ don’t die.”

S he hung up and sat back in her chair. Well, Martin’s chair, technically. Behind her, Jon paced restlessly, his feet unnervingly silent on the floor. Why did a ghost need to pace? He didn’t have… blood, or, or nerves, or anything for the activity to affect.

“We should meet them out there,” Jon said. “I can fit in your bag easily. We’ll take the Underground and – ”

“It’d be over by the time we got there,” Sasha said. “Even if it wasn’t, what are you going to do? Warn the cultists that they’ll die unloved unless they’re more generous on Christmas? All we’d do out there is be two more people that Tim has to protect.”

“We could… help him find Martin.”

“How?”

“I can walk through walls! Search the houses stealthily!”

“Can you walk through walls? You’re not sinking through the floor.”

Jon frowned at the floor. “That’s a good point, actually. I can stand on the floor and sit on chairs, but my hand goes right through cups and pens. Why?”

“Probably for stupid reasons,” Sasha shrugged. “Try the wall. Go on.”

Jon cautiously brushed his hand against the wall. He did not phase through it.

“Well that’s stupid,” he said. “Ghosts can go through walls in all the stories.”

“How many of those ghosts were revived by a bone-dropping evil book?”

“… Fair enough. But there’s got to be something we can do! Martin’s out there, and he needs us!”

“No, he doesn’t. He needs three monster hunters with no self-preservation skills. But he will need us, later. Are you alright? You look… work out, I guess? Kind of fadey.”

“I’m a little tired. Being a ghost  _ hurts _ , and it’s… this has been a pretty long spell of existing. I’m not used to it.”

“You can rest if – ”

“Not until Martin’s safe.”

“But there’s no point in you waiting it out out here; if I dismiss you and he summons you after, then you can just skip all the – ”

“Not until Martin is safe. He might… I might know something useful, something that can make a difference. It’s unlikely, but I’m not taking the chance.”

“ Suit yourself.” Sasha glanced at her empty coffee cup. She wanted more, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off the map for too long.

“So, there’s nothing we can do?”

“Not right now, no.”

“Your uh, hacking… that’s all done? You’ve gotten everything useful out of it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I was just wondering where you got that program.  The one that matches the faces with the mobile phone locations?”

“I used separate programs for the facial recognition and the location matching. Both pretty simple Why?”

“Where’d you get them?”

“I don’t know, they were in my random program collection.”

“Right. I just… I mean, you later said that looking at the location history of phones was something you couldn’t do. So the fact you had a program that did that… seems like a program you’d remember acquiring, right?”

“Are… are you suggesting somebody snuck a program onto my computer or something?”

“No. I’m not suggesting that. But, uh, you couldn’t find my phone when I was kidnapped, not with any precision. You could track it to one tower, and this thing tracked a lot of phones, through time, to very precise locations. So you didn’t have it a few years ago, Iit does near-impossible things, and you don’t know how you got it?”

“Where is this going, Jon?”

“Sasha, what… what’s on the laptop screen right now?”

She glanced at the screen. “I’m not going to explain to you again what a map – wait. What do you see on the screen?”

“Nothing. It’s been blank since you summoned me, at least. I didn’t want to say anything while you were working, in case the knowledge threw you of, but…”

“Well. Fuck.” She bit her lip. “That’s… I mean, we know that Tim’s phone was talking to the towers inside the dark radius, or we would’ve lost the call. It couldn’t have been blocking the signal. But.”

“But the Dark  _ can _ block the Eye.”

“Huh. Well, this is… something.”

“It’s.. useful, at least? I, I mean, if you’re going to be this involved, then so far as abilities go, you could have done worse.”

“I suppose so. God, Martin’s going to be pissed.”

“Why? It’s saving him.”

“Yeah, but we both tried to become the Archivist to protect the other one. He took the fall, and I went and became a spook anyway. I should probably have a talk with Basira, when she gets back from America.”

“You think she can help with this?”

“No. But apart from Mary, who’s already a monster, everyone else who’s worked in these archives has become… something. Given how rare this usually is, I think we have to blame the environment.  Maybe it’s just being here so much, maybe it’s the binding contract, maybe it’s the act of reading and recording so many statements, but something about this place leaves… wounds, ripe for eldritch infection. Heh. I knew I should’ve taken that shady alt-medicine job out of college.”

“Well, at least the Eye is… safer than some.”

“Yeah. Could’ve been something really gross.”  She kept her eyes on the map, even though everything interesting was happening inside the zone she couldn’t see.

For now, all she could do was wait, and watch.


	98. Chapter 98

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin, sweetie, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry my ugly ass plot would even do this to you, oh my god.

Tim, Julia and Trevor surveyed the three target houses.

“So,” Trevor said, “what do you two think? The house with the family eating breakfast in the kitchen, the house playing loud music with all the lights on, or the silent house with big heavy curtains on every window?”

“I might be wrong,” Julia said, “but at a wild guess, I’d say the third one.”

“Think you might be right, there.”

The three advanced on the house; Trevor wielding his shotgun, Julia with a handgun, and Tim shirtless and carrying his pair of mismatched kitchen knives. Somebody had probably called the police by now. Hopefully, this confrontation was about to get super weird so it would be a Section 31 response; those always took forever.

Still, they had some sense of subtlety, so on the off-chance they hadn’t been spotted by neighbours yet, the trio headed for the back door. It was unlocked, so they  turned their phones off and snuck almost soundlessly into the house, slipping past several heavy quilts hung over the door to keep any light from showing around the cracks. 

It was, of course, completely dark, but nobody pulled out any kind of light source. Tim slowed his breathing until it was almost silent even to him, allowing him to hear better.

He could hear, or perhaps feel, the presence of his companions, but their prey were all further in the house. They were discussing something quietly, in distressed tones.

“We should just kill him.”

“That won’t do anything! They’ll just make a new Archivist, like they made this one. No; if we want to stop them, need to keep the Archivist out of their hands until we can destroy the Institute.”

“How? We don’t have the power to hold him forever! He’ll break out or he’ll die; either way, they’ll have an Archivist again.”

“We don’t have the power, but Manuela does.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ll just ship him to the North Pole! That’s perfectly feasible!”

“I meant we could bring her here.”

“She wouldn’t come.”

“She would, if we told her about this. We can’t let the Eye win. She knows that.”

Tim wanted to charge forward, but he felt Julia’s fingers land on his shoulder, a call for restraint. She was right; they weren’t certain of how many people were int here. Or where Martin was.

Also, both of his companions were carrying guns, which weren’t ideal weapons for fighting in pitch darkness.

Trevor left the room. Tim wasn’t sure where he was going or what the plan was, but the duo seemed to know what they were doing, so he let Julia lead him deeper into the house. Moving silently in complete darkness was very, very slow, but this was the one time they didn’t need to worry about time. If they were ever going to have all the time in the world, it was here. The last part of the stalk. Setting up for the kill.

“We could question the Archivist and find out – ”

“Ha! No. You think all the darkness we can summon here is going to protect us if we stray into his speciality? We’re working with such limited power already.  Look, we just… we just have to press forward and attack on schedule,  fire cultists or not.”

Tim and Julia moved into the occupied room. The living room, judgng by the layout of the house, although it was too dark to know for sure.

Including them, there were eight people in the room.

One over the other side of the room, calm. Five people around something in the middle of the room, suddenly alert. They knew that the intruders were there. They wanted to flee, but they were protecting something.

From the other side of the room, the roar of a shotgun. A window exploded, a hole torn in its heavy curtains; a feeble beam of light streamed in.

Tim was light-blinded, but not nearly as badly as the cultists in the middle of the room. He leapt forward, knives in hand.

The shadows weren’t… working properly. The light didn’t diffuse through the room properly; it was swallowed quickly, leaving most of the room in darkness, making his colleagues’ guns useless for combat. Trevor concentrated on the windows; Julia holstered her gun and leapt into combat with her bare hands.

Tim fought enough to keep the cultists off him, but resisted the urge to get distracted by taking them down. His attention was on the large wooden box in the middle of the room, its large metal clasp illuminated by the window light. It was what they’d immediately leapt to protect, before realising they were unmatched. It wasn’t locked; the clasp was the kind designed to keep something in, not out.

Martin.

Tim was dimply aware of cultists around him trying to flee, finding the exits blocked, and standing their ground; of confusing shadows that didn’t make sense; of Trevor being lifted off his feet my something invisible, but whose shadow showed clearly on the wall lifting his shadow; of Julia drawing her gun again to shoot the shadow, and Trevor dropping to the ground. None of it was remotely important compared to that box. Tim undid the clasp and lifted the heavy lid. Inside was…

No one. The box was empty.

No; the box was _dark_. There were three levels of light in the room now; the weak light from the windows, the darkness of the rest of the room, and the true darkness of the box, deep enough to make mere sightlessness look like bright light. As the smoky darkness coalesced into something more like a liquid, Tim stared into it, struck with a horrible thought – what if this thing was like that fucked-up coffin in the Institute database? The one with the stairs that lead deep into the unknown, that nobody came out of? Something like that would be the perfect place to imprison an Archivist, wouldn’t it…

No; they’d said they couldn’t hold him forever, so…

A cultist was trying to drag him away from the box, but froze in surprise at the sight of what was inside. From the look on her face, she had expected something else in the box, too. Her hands were tightening around Tim’s neck, so he broke her wrist and tossed her into the box – she hit the bottom and sat up. Not some kind of infinite space then; a box that was genuinely empty, but for the darkness.

Somebody was chanting something. Tim’s vision blurred as the shadows in the corners of the room deepened; sounds started to echo strangely. He didn’t notice the cultist get close enough to hit him over the head; he slashed out blindly with his cleaver, and missed, but the chanting stopped.

He’d been lured away from the box, which he realised, too late, was the intention. Someone had upended it, and true darkness flowed across the floor like water. There seemed to be far, far too much of it to have come from the box.

Everyone else in the room immediately jumped onto the nearest piece of furniture. Tim decided it was probably wise to follow their example.

There were a lot more cultists in the room than Tim remembered. He wasn’t sure where they’d all come from, but the way they moved suggested that several of them were holding weapons, weapons he couldn’t see in the darkness. He couldn’t place them in the darkness. He couldn’t tell ally from enemy. He called out, to mark his location for Julia and Trevor, btu the darkness swallowed his voice immediately.

Fine. Fucked-up floor-is-lava haunted house duel it was.

The cultists didn’t seem to have trouble telling who the intruders were, so Tim simply attacked anyone who attacked him. Someone leapt at him, and he felt a long blade (a sword?) slice into his shoulder as he tossed them to the Dark floor. A scream of terror, or agony, or ecstasy, and they were gone.

It was all going quite well, Tim thought, until something his him across the head and he passed out.

\------------------------

  
  


Everything hurt.

It wasn’t really pain, Martin thought; it was more just… reality. There was suddenly so much of it again; the feel of air on his skin, the light in his eyes conveying the reality and presence of everything around him, the way sound interacted with the world once more. And, of course, him. He hadn’t been aware there was so much of him, but suddenly, it was back.

Martin tried to make sense of the sudden onslought of information. He was lying face-down on something soft (a bed?), in a bright room. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. Or anything below his neck, really, aside from breathing. Figuring out why was a bit beyond him, for the moment.

“That was worrying, wasn’t it, dear?” a woman asked. “I thought I might lose you, there! Getting kidnapped by the People’s Church, really!”

Martin squinted and turned his head. On the bedside table sat a brush and a little bowl of something he thought for a moment, with a stab of panic, was a bowl of Darkness, before he realised it was ink. Behind it sat the skin book. And behind the bedside table…

The dark thing he’d been seeing flash occasionally in the corner of his eye was there, but now that he could get a good look, he could see that it was in fact an old woman. The reason he hadn’t immediately recognised the form as human on earlier glances was probably because of the dark tattoos all over her body, breaking up her outline. Martin could read what they said, although the arcane phrases themselves were meaningless to him.

And he could recognise the alphabet. Sanskrit.

He opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, then shut it. It probably wasn’t a great idea to antagonise anyone right now.

“Oh, you can ask!” Mary Keay said reassuringly. “I’ve already decided what I’m going to do with you. You won’t make anything worse.”

“Aren’t you dead?”

“In a manner of speaking. Of course, you know as well as anyone how tricky things like ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ can be. I am rather more dead than I’d like, given my Gerard’s unreliability, but we can’t change the past now. All we can do is think about the future.” She picked up the brush and dipped the tip in ink. “And _that_ is where _you_ come in.”

Martin considered his options. He didn’t have many.  If he could do something to, to buy time, await rescue… but there probably wasn’t a rescue coming. How would anyone know where he was? Who would predict  _ Mary Keay _ ?

He needed information. He needed to keep her talking. Buy time, learn something he could use to escape… at the very least, not die with this mystery on his mind.

“Didn’t Gertrude destroy you?” he asked, while the paintbrush danced across his back.

Mary laughed a dry laugh that crinkled like old paper. “Oh, I’m sure she planned to, initially, but Gertrude was never any kind of threat. For all the power your kind flaunt when you give yourselves away to the powers, it comes with such glaring weaknesses. An Archivist is always in a weaker bargaining situation against anyone willing to trade information. I taught her to bind souls, and some of the deeper and more complicated secrets of the book, and in exchange she didn’t destroy me. She simply bound me between two new souls so that I couldn’t manifest. I must say, I was expecting to be trapped for at least a century or two before anyone would take it into their head to burn my bindings! I should thank you. To be out so quickly was quite a surprise.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Another complicated question. Everyone dies, dear – except me, if this works. I suppose whether I am going to kill you or have saved you depends on how long you would have lived under the care of the People’s Church instead, which I don’t know. If it comforts you, know that I’m hoping you will avoid a complete death for a good long while yet.”

Talking wasn’t slowing her writing at all. What would actually _help_ here?

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Why, I’m making you a page, of course! Oh, don’t worry; as I said, you won’t die completely, not right away. But my previous attempt at my own little ritual wasn’t perfect, as I’m sure you’re aware. And if I want the strength to fix it, I need a battery, and the life of an Archivist should do just nicely. I would have preferred to wait until you were stronger, but better to do it now than let the People’s Church kill you, or whatever other random forces you’ve stirred up against you.” She moved back into Martin’s view and put the paintbrush down on the table. She was also, he noticed, holding something else – a large knife.

“Now,” she said, “this might hurt a little.”


	99. Chapter 99

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for some weird dreams.

Tim looked down at his hands. Detonator in one, axe in the other.

“I tried to help you!” Arthur Nolan pleaded. “We kept you alive, guided you…”

“I was there for you!” Jude yelled, pointing a melting wax finger. “I gave you shit but you knew I had your back. You knew, and you used it to kill me.”

Tim couldn’t stop himself from raising the axe. From depressing the plunger. As the world around him erupted in fire and his flesh bubbled and somewhere Grimaldi laughed, he looked up, right into the penetrating eyes of…

But Martin wasn’t looking at him. He was trying to – Tim could practically feel the heat of his stare trying to push through the blindfold of leather strips wrapped around and around his head, covered in writing in some kind of spiky ancient alphabet. Strips of the same leather wrapped around his wrists, tying him to… something that Tim couldn’t see, but didn’t seem to stop him following Tim through the dream, unseeing. Eventually, he wandered off like he usually did, presumably to confuse and mystify the next statement-giver. Tim didn’t know how many nightmares Martin had. Probably not very many, given how reticent he was to take statements.

When Tim awoke, it was in a bed in a motel room. His shoulder hurt. He dimly recalled someone cutting him with… had that been a sword? Had he taken on some guy with a sword in pitch darkness?? Was he insane? The wound looked professionally tended, at least, although it was hard to see much under the bandages.

“Good, you managed to wake up. That’s a good sign.” Julia shone a light into his eyes.

Since the Unknowing, Tim’s life seemed to be a series of stupid decisions followed by being patched up by various extremely dangerous women. Was he bad at making life choices? Maybe. He pushed Julia’s hand away. He didn’t have time to be concussed. “My phone. Where’s my phone?”

Julia handed him his phone, still switched off from the house break-in. “What’s so urgent?”

“I just had the most batshit dream and I have to tell my friend about it  right away .”

“Oh. You’re one of _those_ people.”

\------------------------

  
  


“So, good news and bad news,” Sasha said, hanging up the phone. “Oh, and Manuela Dominguez is at the North Pole apparently, so that’s one mystery struck off the list.”

“What happened?” Jon asked, through gritted teeth. Sasha could see that he was trying to hide his pain and exhaustion, and it wasn’t working. He’d been summoned for too long.

“They didn’t find Martin. But Tim’s having the nightmares again.”

“So he’s alive.”

“Yeah. Except…” Sasha described the dream. “Do you know anything about that? Another weird Archivist thing?”

“I never had anything like that, no. When the Circus had me, I was blindfolded sometimes, but I could still see the nightmares fine. Same as in the coma.”

“Right. Well, I’ll look into it. You should rest.”

“Not until Martin – ”

“It could take us days to find him. It took us a month to get you back from the Circus! Look at you; you’re falling apart. You _have_ to rest.”

“I don’t ‘rest’ any more. Out here, there might still be something I can do to help.”

“Rest or not, I bet if I dismiss you for a couple of days you’ll come back better than this. And if there is something you know that can help, wouldn’t you rather be as together as possible to think through it, when the time comes?”

“… Fine. But when you know more…”

“I promise I’ll bring you back.”

“Alright. Fine.”

Sasha dismissed him and checked, just in case, for the tracking app on Martin’s phone. And found it! In the house Tim had raided, now free of the darkness. It must’ve been left there when Martin disappeared to wherever he was now.

Sasha wondered how expensive it would be to get trackers put in her coworkers’ teeth, like in that Spy Kids movie.

\--------------------------

  
  


It was dark, in the Tower.

Dark at the lower levels, at least. There were no windows; there were no need for them. What was there to see? Once, the world had been varied and expansive, but from the moment the first brick of the  T ower had been laid, that had no longer mattered.  From that moment, everything only existed in relation to the Tower; everything was wood and iron and science and labour and pride, materials for the Tower. Else it was a pleasant view for the Tower, its value in the perspective it gave its builders; pristine forests to pat themselves on the back for leaving untouched, stars to investigate and marvel at, elements to analyse and grow their knowledge of the universe, rare species of birds to save from themselves. On higher levels of the Tower, Martin knew that there would be windows to marvel at the light of such things, as it streamed inside to illuminate the walls of the Tower and demonstrate its majesty, so that the inhabitants could look at their own work, look down at the lower levels built by their ancestors, and pretend to themselves that it had been planned, rather than an accident of their own natures. To pretend that the first builders to lay those first bricks could have had any conception of anything like a tower, and thus pretend that they, too, had any chance of predicting what they were building. 

But there was no need for such windows on the lower levels. When the lower levels were built, the Tower was not yet strong enough to codify the world, and since the builders could only think in reference to the Tower,  the world contained no false boundaries that they could yet call ‘understanding’ or ‘reality’. There was nothing to see.

And so Martin stood in the dark. He was familiar with the dark by now, and he was not afraid of it in this place. In this place, it would not hurt him. He knew where the walls and the stairs were, and anything else it could hide from him was not important.

Here, the threat was not the dark, but the Tower looming above. An impossible weight being held up by walls that were so, so weak. The Tower was so very heavy and its construction was flawed; not flawed in the sense that there was anything wrong with it, simply in the sense that infinite growth was impossible.  The builders would build to a Heaven an infinite distance away, and the Tower would fall, and the better they did, the higher they built, the heavier the Tower would be and the heavier it would fall.

Any moment now, incalculable tons of stone and steel and language and agriculture and art and engineering could fall right down onto him,  buryi ng him instantly. And the longer he lingered, the heavier it would be.

There was no escape from the collapse. There was no way out of the Tower, because the Tower was everything. But when it did collapse, it would be safer to be higher. Those at the top  h ad such a long, dangerous way to fall, but so much less to fall on  top of  them.

So Martin began to ascend.

\-------------------------

  
  


**TheAdmiral’sLady has sent you a puzzle!**

Melanie sighed. The whole point of the app was to communicate securely when they needed to. Specifically, it was so that Georgie would know everything was okay and _wouldn’t keep trying to talk to her_. Melanie was too dangerous to be around, and whether that was because of her own issues or because Peter would Vanish people she got too close to was irrelevant. Sending two messages in one day was too frequent. It was dangerous. Georgie needed to back off, for her own safety.

Melanie opened the puzzle.

GRBRXKDYHVRPHZKHUHWRVWDB

She’d half decoded it while mindlessly moving animals around the screen when she was interrupted.

“Melanie. I have another statement for you to – ”

“Was he right?”

“Who?”

“Dekker. You keep giving me statements about his Extinction theory.”

“Yes. I believe he was. Tell me, how do you feel about that?”

Melanie thought about this. Peter had been isolating her; he wanted her Lonely. What kind of answer would he be looking for?

She shrugged. “Confused, mostly. The End is already a fear. I get that the Extinction is different, I just don’t see why it’s scary. I mean, it’s about things I won’t be around any more to experience, so why would I be afraid of it?”

“You don’t care what happens to the world at large?”

“Of course I care. I mean, if I could save the world, I would, because I try to be a good person. But that’s not the same as being afraid of not saving the world. The only scary part of the Extinction is the End; the rest… I mean, I try to be someone who’d not let it happen if I had the choice, but I won’t be there if it does, so I don’t get where the fear is coming from to power this.”

“I’m a little confused by that, too. But it is happening, and I’m glad to hear your perspective, because stopping it is exactly what I need your help to do.”

“Really? How many trash statues and starving cannibal circus-goers do I have to stab?”

“ Despite your significant capacity for violence, that's not what we need in this case.  I’m still perfecting the details, so I can’t give you a full explanation yet, but I believe this project will require your… other talents.”

And then he left without further explanation, because of course he fucking did.

Well, at least he was telling her _something_. Perhaps this would come to a head soon, and she could get on with her life. Whatever her life was these days.

Melanie picked up the statement, forgetting about Georgie’s message.


	100. Chapter 100

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All according to keikaku.

Elias could relax. His Archivist was alive.

All in all, things had gone fairly well, he thought. He’d been wondering then the People’s Church would get around to attacking; he’d had half a mind to construct some reason to send Martin to Manuela, but now that would not, fortunately, be necessary any more. And from the glimpse he’d caught before Mary Keay had properly warded her hideout, that little escapade was going brilliantly. He didn’t completely trust the manner in which he’d happened upon the right information, but sending that book had been a good play, although the difficulty and expense in finding someone both able and willing to bind Jon to it had turned out to be a complete waste of time. Such a waste of good blackmail material… and Martin hadn’t even needed the bait! He’d started reading from the book and arranging for pages to be burned of his own accord! He hadn’t even known that Jon was in there until the deed was already done!

Ah, well.  Better to be overly cautious at this stage, anyway. And if he pulled this off, none of the money or power or information he currently had would matter anyway, so he could afford to use as much of it as he needed to.

The book had been a good idea . Jon’s situation had been… unplanned, and poorly timed. This was much more controllable. Much neater.

Everything was working out just fine.

\----------------------------------------

  
  


One of the various useless things that Martin had Known about, before the People’s Church had taken him, was _Ophiocordyceps unilateralis_. A species of fungus that parasitised carpenter ants, hijacking their brains and switching about their pleasure/pain signals in such a way that they’d leave the safety of their nests and climb to the very top of grass stalks, so that when their heads exploded with the pressure of the growing fungus, the spores would be carried far and wide.

The urge to build the Tower, Martin reasoned, was a little like that. An infection that had settled deep in the mind of an ape, and told it to be something else. Who was Patient Zero? Who had been that unlucky ape with the right combination of genes to believe itself more than flesh, and set this thing in motion? What could you even say the first brick was? The first time someone had drawn a shape on a cave wall and said, ‘this is a person’? The first time someone had tried to calculate something they couldn’t hold in their own mind by piling stones or marking sticks? The first time somebody had looked at the sun and given it a name and face and personality? The first time somebody had told a story? The first time somebody had worn the skin of an animal, had sewed dead skin together to make clothing, had sewed living skin together to heal a wound? The first person to uproot a plant and replant it closer to home, for easy access? Humans hadn’t built for thousands upon thousands of years, and then, all of a sudden… they had.

He supposed that it wasn’t that simple. Behaviour like this developed in aggregate. You couldn’t pick one being and point to it and say, ‘that’s the one, that’s who it started with’; the development ad maturation of the infection had taken many generations, and there was no single point where one could say an animal had become a builder, a person.

Mary had once described a human as “a story imprisoned in some meat”, and she wasn’t wrong. The story burrowed itself deep and told the meat it was loved, that it was real, that it was a soul – at least, that the story was a soul, and the story was what was important. And believing it made it correct. And the story within a single mind was a person, but the story in aggregate was the Tower.

Martin climbed, running one hand along the wall. The Tower was built from materials harvested from the land, the world that only had meaning in relation to the Tower, but primarily, it was built of people. Their stories made the shape of it, their labours produced the bricks, their very bones were crushed into the mortar. Generation after generation sacrificed their flesh to the Tower, sometimes forced by circumstance, sometimes willingly and joyfully, and upon their bones stood their descendants, climbing ever higher to sacrifice themselves in turn. They wove stories to give different meanings to their sacrifices – they built families, they built new technologies, they built walls and roads and chapels, they built justice systems, they made grand plays and books and songs, discovered new lands, created grand companies or celebrity careers or quiet lives in remote villages healing or educating or feeding children. The waged war or set themselves alight to protest for peace, slaughtered the impure enemy or smuggled the innocent oppressed to safety, healed the land under their feet or reached for the stars far above. They all lived and died doing the same thing, building the Tower ever higher, at the commands of an infection that had buried so deep, permeated them so completely, that it _was them_ , and had been for at least a couple of million years. They bent their bodies, the flesh that was everything they were but that they had divorced themselves from so much that many philosophies treated it as more of a home than a self, to the service of the Tower, until it wholly consumed them and grew larger, fatter, ever hungrier.

Martin couldn’t see that as a bad thing, necessarily. After all, he was a human, a story imprisoned in meat; the idea of living his life and making the world a better place, perhaps even leaving a mark for the future, was as appealing to him as to anyone else. But it as an extremely puzzling thing. In his mother’s bedtime story, God had cursed the humans to be builders, resulting in the inevitability of the Tower’s creation and eventual collapse.

But the story had never said _why_.

\---------------------------------

  
  


Tim’s phone beeped. He reluctantly rolled over to grab it.

As his arm moved under her, Julia’s eyes slitted open. “Is that your friend you tell your weird dreams to?”

“No, this is the friend who keeps trying to get me into Hanson.” He squinted at the phone. “More weird shit is happening.”

“Good weird shit or bad weird shit?”

“I can never tell until it’s over. Looks like good weird shit. I do need to go, though.” Reluctantly, he sat up. “Will you still be here when I get back?”

“Probably not. Trevor’s got a lead on some of those fire cultists going on the move, and we gotta clean those up before they hurt anyone else. We’ll be back for the Dark cultists whenever we get back. You’re not the kind of guy who’s going to make a fuss about that, are you?”

“About you needing to go to work? I’m a drop-dead gorgeous gift to the universe, not a hypocrite.” He ran a hand up and down her arm, fingers lingering on scars. “I just hope you don’t bring any more of these back with you.”

She snorted. “Which of us needed their shoulder sewing up last night?”

“Okay, fair.” He leaned as far over as he could without aggravating said shoulder, far enough to kiss her intensely. He tried to memorise every sensation of the kiss, in case she didn’t come back. “’Bye, Julia.”

“Good luck with the weird shit, Tim. You’d better save me some Dark cultists. They’re kind of my thing.”

“What a coincidence. Fire cultists are mine.”

\-------------------------------

  
  


Mary, Sasha, Tim, and the ghostly apparition of Jon stood around the hospital bed, staring down at Martin He looked peaceful, but then, unconscious people usually did.

“This again, huh,” Tim said.

“He’s… in a better condition than I was,” Jon said. “He’s, he’s breathing on his own, mostly physically intact – ”

“Except for a patch of skin mysteriously missing from his back,” Tim noted, glancing meaningfully at the bag in which Sasha was carrying Jon’s page. “Just throwing this out there, but does anyone have any idea where the ghost book is?”

“He’s not dead, though,” Sasha said. “Don’t they have to be dead?”

Everyone looked at Jon, who rolled his eyes.

“Once again, being bound to a supernatural book of the departed does not give me any special knowledge about said supernatural book of the departed. I don’t know any more than you. I suspect I know rather less. Tim, you said there was writing on his blindfold?”

“Yeah. I don’t know the alphabet, though.”

“That means nothing,” Sasha said. “Some people can’t read in dreams, so it might’ve been English for all you’d know.”

“Nah, I can read in dreams. He usually sleeps in this shirt that has a message to remind people they’re just dreaming. It’s kind of adorable in its way.”

“Do you remember the letters well enough to recreate them?” Jon asked. “Perhaps we can find out – ”

“Not a chance. There was kind of a lot going on at the time. I’ll try to remember them tonight.”

They looked at Martin for a bit.

“Can he hear us?” Sasha asked.

Everyone looked at Jon again.

“I’m not an expert on comas either. But it he can’t see anything even in the dreams, I doubt his perception of the material world is going to be any better.”

Sasha reached out to squeeze Martin’s hand anyway. “Cavalry’s coming, Martin,” she said. “Hang in there.”

“I can’t look at this,” Tim said. “I’m going to the cafeteria.”

“Me, too,”Sasha said.

“Hang on,” Jon said. “Just… give me another minute.”

Mary held out her hand for Jon’s page. Sasha handed it over.

“Text me when you’re done so I can come and dismiss him,” Sasha said. “Unless you want a ghost to be wandering a crowded hospital.”

Mary’s face lit up.

“I am not haunting a hospital to stir up fear for you,” Jon said wearily. “It wouldn’t work, anyway. People who see a ghost in a hospital aren’t going to be afraid of strangers, they’re going to be reminded that a lot of people die in hospitals.”

“We could try.”

“No.”

The pair looked down at Martin. At least they knew where he was.

They just had no idea about anything else.


	101. Chapter 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monsters awkwardly talk about being monsters.

Sasha and Tim ordered overpriced pastries at the little hospital cafe and found an isolated table to eat them. It had, Sasha reflected, been a weird couple of days.

“So,” she said into the silence, “I kind of have superpowers now. Just so you know.”

“Oh. Great. God forbid any of us get out of this normal.”

“I don’t think any of us are ‘getting out’ of this at all.”

“I got out.”

“You don’t work for the Institute, sure. But didn’t you destroy two houses last night hunting cultists?”

“The cultists destroyed the houses,” Tim corrected her in a tone that said okay, sure, he got her point. “So what can you do?”

“I’m not… completely sure. I’m worried that thinking too hard about it might make it, I don’t know, stop? Like Wile E. Coyote walking off a cliff and not falling until he looks down. I can track stuff, I think. Hack stuff. But in ways that should be impossible. Just like, physically, on the level of where data does and doesn’t exist and how fast it can flow through what connections, impossible.”

“All of your hacking looks like impossible magic to me. Any, um, negative side effects?”

“Not that I know of. Any for you?”

Tim shrugged. “It’s kind of hard to tell, isn’t it? What’s the influence of some horror god, and what’s just normal trauma. We’ve both seen things that should have us wake up in a screaming fit every night.”

“Do you?”

“I can’t. I can’t wake up unless someone wakes me up, or until the nightmare is over.”

“Shit.”

He shrugged. “It’s worth it. If it helps.”

Sasha watched Tim carefully dissect and eat a tiny apple pie. She vaguely recalled, in the van before the Unknowing a lifetime ago, him confessing to her that he didn’t think he was going to be coming back from the ritual.

Maybe, in a sense, he hadn’t.

\------------------------

  
  


Mary looked down at Martin, and knew that this was her fault. She was supposed to be his bodyguard, and she’d let her guard down. She’d assumed that he was safe, walking home. The People’s Church had been watching for months and done nothing. Nobody else seemed like a threat outside the Institute itself. They’d split up, over some goddamn headphones, and now…

She glanced at Jon. Jon’s eyes were locked on Martin’s face and wet with the glint of illusory tears.

“He’s a big piece of you, too, isn’t he? Important to who you are.”

“Yes. I don’t think I realised that when I was alive. I was too tangled up in… in things that didn’t matter. Look; his eyes are twitching. He’s dreaming. Any idea what he might be dreaming about?”

Mary shrugged. “Wherever he is, he isn’t feeling any fear.”

“Ha. Must be nice.” He cleared his eyes with the palm of one hand. “God, this is a mess. I have no idea what to do about this.”

“We have to find the book.”

“Yes, obviously. But how? We don’t have any leads, we don’t have _anything_.”

“I’ll set up another meeting with Elias tomorrow. I don’t think… I don’t think I’d be able to break in again. So we’ll have to see if he wants to see one of us, I guess.”

They watched Martin a bit longer.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for awhile,” Jon said. “Haven’t really had the chance to. You can’t summon me, and I can’t exactly ask everyone else to leave the room just so we can talk, so…” he shrugged.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Just about… well. I don’t know how to be this, you know?” He gestured at himself. “How to be what I am.”

“I’m not sure how much help I can be, there. I’m basically the personification of an identity crisis.”

“Yes, but you’ve been through… you know. Trying to be a person.”

“Hard, isn’t it?”

“It’s so hard! Everyone expects me to have feelings and, and be a person, _ all the time _ . And I can’t… I mean, I know I’m Jon, but I also know I’m not, not really. I’m a memory written on a piece of paper, but that memory thinks it’s Jon, too, and that’s fine; a human’s just a bunch of memories in a brain that thinks it’s a person, so whatever. But the others are… I constantly feel like, if I don’t defend my identity  as one thing all the time, they’ll decide I’m the other thing. Like they’re both true, but I have to pick one and play to it. I can fit their memories of who I was most of the time, but then if I slip, if I don’t care about death or if I talk about myself as an object or anything like that, they think there’s something wrong with me. Or I could go the other way, I suppose, but then they might decide I’m not Jon and not take my feelings seriously at all.  Whichever way I go, it means that half the time everything’s fine, and the other half I have to act for everyone else’s benefit, because they can’t grasp the… the…”

“Fluidity,” Mary said, nodding. “I’m also learning that humans are really, really bad with fluidity.”

“So you do have this problem.”

“Actually, no. I’ve been having the exact opposite problem. I’m convinced I could walk into the archives with a completely different face and personality and, once they realised it was me in a new mask, they’d just think, ‘oh, Mary’s trying something new’. It doesn’t matter how I behave; I’d still be Mary. It’s a lot to adapt to. At least you seem to understand your identity.”

“Oh, I very much do not. I mean, am I still human?”

“No.”

Jon looked at her in surprise.

“Sorry, that might not be right. I don’t think we use the same definitions of ‘human’. I mean, you don’t generate the kind of fear with power in it any more. You can’t wrap and warp it like you did when you were alive. That’s… really all I know on the subject. But I know humans tend to use definitions that are more… complicated.”

“Yes. I suppose there’s one thing to be said of your system; at least it’s simple and unambiguous.”

“ Perhaps.” She brushed her fingers across her own cheek. “Less useful than I once thought, though.”

Mary looked back down at Martin, his eyes still twitching with dreams. Wherever he was, she hoped it was safe, and stable. She hoped they had time to save him.

She’d failed him once, and it had put him in this situation. She wouldn’t fail him again.

\-------------------------

  
  


Sunlight streamed through the windows on the mid levels, illuminating the inner walls of the Tower. Martin ran his hands over the designs, staring at the myriad symbols.

Extrinsic intelligence, he’d once heard it called; the  collective intelligence outside the mind that said mind could draw upon. The parts of a mind that could not be contained inside a brain and was stored elsewhere. In other brains in the community. In books. In songs and traditions, in parables, on hard drives and monuments. 

Some of what was written into the walls of the Tower was simply that; information that was more conveniently or flexibly or stably stored elsewhere. A beautiful mosaic laid out in tiles so that all could enjoy it, not just the one who imagined the image. The volume of grain taken in, and how much was to be apportioned to each worker. The floor plan of a house, calculations for how much weight a steel beam could take, the words of a song; things that were known and understandable but simply more reliable to store and communicate outside the mind.

And some of them were not like that.

The human mind could not conceive of the number of atoms in the universe. But, with the help of external records, it could be calculated, and recorded using the abstract system of numerals that humans liked to pretend were the same things as numbers. And if the numeral was known, then the mind could pretend that the number was known. If the numeral could be run through other calculations to produce other numerals related to correct numbers, then the mind could pretend that the number of atoms in the universe was somehow understood.

And they could build on top of that.

This cup of grain is of equal value to this handful nuts. But trading goods directly is inconvenient, so we will say that this coin is equal to the value of both. Now this useless metal has value, because we agree it does. The abstract value of this coin is so general, so useful; but coins are heavy, so the banks will hold them and give us promissory paper. This signature on this paper has the value of a cup of grain. The bank keeps its promises if you don’t ask, so don’t ask! According to the maths, now we have five times as much value! Five times as much grain, so long as you don’t actually try to buy the four parts that don’t exist. The numbers are consistent, so that makes them real; if it sounds wrong, your senses are lying to you. Don’t think about it.

You can buy promises from the banks; a right to the right of the money. Somewhere down there, the money is grain, except it isn’t because we don’t trade in grain ever, and we floated from the gold standard two generations ago and nobody noticed. It’s a dream now. Don’t think about it. It’s working, so pretend it makes sense.

Buy and sell the futures of the promises of the money. Five different people each understand a different part of the calculation; nobody can comprehend the whole thing. But the numbers come out the same every time, so it must be right. Extrapolate the problem to computers, who can think better. Computers are logical and mathematical, so their answers must be “right”. Someone in Ecuador sells off all their banana plantations, now your house is worth two per cent more and your car is worth forty per cent less.  This has also somehow affected a famine in some island nation, even though the numbers can’t magic food in or out of existence.

If you can’t understand it, your perspective is wrong. Your logic is lying to you. Of course the world makes sense. Don’t think about it.

There are at least seven dimensions. There might be thirty two dimensions. There might not be thirty two dimensions. There are not infinite dimensions. You know the word ‘dimension’, you understand all of those sentences. So you know what they are saying. You understand what a dimension is.

You understand, it makes sense. The world makes sense. Don’t think about it.

The higher the Tower is built, the more abstracted parts of it become from anything that the mind can conceive, until the builders are swimming in a world of incomprehensibility as diverse and random as the one they sprung from, only now it is penned out with numbers of their own creation. Numbers to put a thin veneer of false sanity over a world of chaotic madness. But beyond the comfort of that false veil, sanity has no meaning. Comprehension has no meaning. Cause and effect are extrapolated after the fact, because no mind can figure out what has truly happened.

The understanding is being done by false minds, constructed minds. Community intelligence, where “America” and “England” and “McDonald’s” and “ Exxon Mobil” take actions. Artificial intelligence, where programs train programs to spy sheep in fields or write symphonies or trade stocks. They laugh at them when they fail to identify sheep, and put their faith in them to run the economies. Unable to understand the edges of the reality the builders themselves were building into the Tower, they built strange and alien minds and laid them as mortar between the stones and lived in fear of their fickle and incomprehensible motivations turning them hostile. They accepted that Alexa and Wendy’s and Europe and The Economy lived among them, and they kept building.

T here was nothing to do but keep building.

Martin  climbed higher.


	102. Chapter 102

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basira returns.

Over the last couple of days, Basira had spent a lot of time on planes. It had been a long journey both ways, and they hadn’t found the information on cultists they’d hoped to find. Daisy had insisted on going dark while in America,  so she’d been under the impression that she’d be returning to her generally tame, if weird, part time Institute job and have a bit of time to sink back into her normal routine before the next weird thing happened. 

A nd then Tim had met them in the airport, and explained everything on the way home.

“ Let me get this straight,”  she began as she tossed her bag onto  her couch . “We were gone for one weekend – ”

“Less than a weekend,” Daisy cut in, striding past with her own bag.

“Less than a weekend, and in that time, Martin got kidnapped twice and is currently in a coma, the ghost book is missing and might be the key to saving him, you teamed up with a pair of cultist-hunting weirdos and destroyed two houses, and all the People’s Church we know of are dead or seem to have left London. Oh, and someone from the other side of that fire cult schism showed up to kill you and is dead, so they may or may not be hanging around trying to kill us.”

“And you got yourself cut up again,” Daisy noted, eyes on his arm.

“I couldn’t see, I was trying not to fall into the supernatural darkness, and they came at me with a sword,” Tim protested. “I couldn’t – ”

“Does that about cover everything?” Basira asked.

“Yeah. Wait, no. Sasha has Eye powers now, did I mention that?”

“ Ugh.” Basira rubbed her temples. “This is it, Daisy. We can never leave London again. The whole town will probably be levelled if we do.”

“How did your investigation go?”

“We didn’t destroy any houses. Or, admittedly, find all that much. If you have a phone number for this Julia or Trevor, I’d love to compare notes, since it sounds like they’re hunting the same people we are. In the meantime, I’d… better go to work and try to save my boss, I guess.”

So she did.

When she arrived, Mary was typing a statement into the database, but her eyes were on Sasha, pacing the archives. Jon stood over the other side of the room, distracted enough that he didn’t seem to notice his feet weren’t properly lined up with the floor he was supposed to be standing on.

“So we need to find the book,” Sasha was saying. “We have a page of it. They’ve got to be… mystically connected somehow, right? For the page to still work? Can we use the page to find the rest, without hurting Jon?”

“You can’t hurt me, I’m dead,” Jon pointed out. “If you have to choose between us, choose Martin. Basira! Hi! Are you up to date on – ?”

“Tim filled me in. When we find the book, what are we supposed to do, exactly? Can the binding be reversed?”

“Burning seems to work,” Jon said. “We find his page and we burn it.”

“Burning kills the ghosts,” Sasha said. “Or destroys them, or… helps them move on, or… they’re gone, anyway. Maybe that’s just, just undoing the binding, but what if it’s dangerous? What if it kills Martin?”

“Do we have anything else to try?” Basira asked. “I mean, if our only other option is leaving him like this…”

“Whoever did this to Martin did it for bad reasons,” Mary said. “I think Martin would want us to stop it, even if we’re not sure how safe it is for him. I think he’d want to take the risk.”

“Of course he would,” Jon muttered, fondly.

“Hypocrite,” Basira told him. “You sacrificed yourself for the world.”

“I tried to save the world and, incidentally, happened to have a building collapse on me. You could’ve died just as easily in there.”

“Figuring out what to do with the books is irrelevant,” Sasha said, “unless we can _find_ it.”

“Tim says you’ve got Eyeball powers now,” Basira said. “Can you use those?”

Sasha paused in her pacing and thought about this. Then she shook her head, and the pacing resumed. “No, I, I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know exactly what I can do, but I don’t think it’s particularly… mystic.”

“Your magical fear demon powers aren’t mystic?”

“Everything I’ve been able to do so far is an extension on what I could already do. I can hack and track some kinds of electronics, or surveillance databases. I don’t know how reliable it is, or what the limits are, but I… I think it has something to do with monitoring people in ways there’s a cultural consciousness about being monitored, with technology. Surveillance state stuff. I don’t think tracking a mystic connection between – oh. Oh, fuck.” Sasha buried her face in her hands and leaned her forehead against the wall.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m The Man. I am the quintessential Man. Shit. My old friends would give me _so much shit_ for this if they had any idea what was going on.”

“Well,” Basira said, “does the person with the book have a, a mobile phone, or anything?”

“Probably. But I have no idea how to go about finding who it is. The Dark cut off access to any information during their kidnapping, and whoever this is took Martin from them, leaving his phone behind. Meaning there was no way to track them, and no way to track Martin. If you can get me their phone number I can do something, but there are _so many phones_ in London.”

“Right,” Basira said. “Right. We can figure this out.”

She could figure this out.

There was nothing to worry about. She could always figure it out.

\------------------------

  
  


Tim sat on his bed, looked at his shelf, and smiled. Three wax heads, each with their eyes carefully removed (the blindfolds had been getting fiddly), and his new acquisition, a sword. He’d mentioned offhand to Julia that he like trophies, so she’d salvaged the sword of that cultist he’d tossed into the Dark when she and Trevor dragged him out of the building. She really was great.

He took his phone to the brokem bit of drainpipe that served as the closest exit to the tunnel network, and the closest place he could get phone reception, to text her.

_Tim: My team are back in town. They want to compare notes with you about the cultists whenever you’re around._

He got a reply quickly.

_Julia: Probably back in 1wk. Maybe not. Depends._

One week wasn’t too long. While he had her attention…

_Tim: This is a long shot, but do you know anything about ghosts?_

_Julia: What kind?_

_Tim: We’ve got problems with this weird book. Looking for someone with esoteric ghost knowledge._

_Julia: Does it drop animal bones?_

_Tim: Yeah!_

_Julia: Back in London in 1 hour. Send a meetng location._

Oh. Okay.

Tim had better nip to the gym to take a shower, then.

\-------------------------------

  
  


**TheAdmiral’sLady has sent you a puzzle!**

SOHDVHWDONWRPH

  
  


Melanie sighed and mentally decoded the message. Had Georgie always been this chatty? How much was she, Melanie, really required to respond? When she’d come back to the world she was so sure that she’d wanted to… to get better, whatever that meant. But what did that mean? Really, hadn’t she just wanted to be back in the real world?

And now she was. And things were better; she had somewhat of a handle on her anger, and when it got out of control it didn’t matter, because there was no one to hurt. The Institute, or Lukas at least, could afford to replace the occasional broken cup or computer. Everyone left her well alone, now, except Lukas, when he absolutely had to talk to her. And Georgie, on the app.

The app had been a bad idea. She should’ve just asked Sasha to tell Georgie she was okay and shouldn’t be contacted, and left it at that. She didn’t want to talk. And it wasn’t safe to talk, so it was better that she didn’t want to, anyway. Working with Peter, maintaining the distance, protected everyone; it wasn’t something she needed to feel guilty about, and it wasn’t something she needed Georgie to try to pull her out of.

She sent a reply: LPILQH.

**SishSash has sent you a puzzle!**

**StokerTheFlames has sent you a puzzle!**

**@@#%%^%W% has sent you a puzzle!**

**Basira has sent you a puzzle!**

Oh, come on! Really?!

Melanie turned her phone off, and went back to her spreadsheets.


	103. Chapter 103

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim engineers an awkward social situation.

Martin  climb ed to the upper levels of the Tower. He could almost hear the builders working away inside the bricks, dedicating their tiny lives to this doomed construct… but he knew that that was his imagination. He wasn’t part of the Tower, here; he was locked outside, caught between the everything within the bricks and the nothing outside the tower, and he couldn’t See the way back.

It all made sense from the inside, when he was building. But out here, he had to wonder just what the hell was going on. There had to be a _reason_ for humans to be like this. It seemed such a strange thing to be an accident of evolution. Everyone working together like this… it had the makings of a grand plan, with… someone at the helm. Surely.

But that was fallacious thinking. That was the thinking of someone standing high on the Tower, looking down at the lower levels and inventing just-so stories about the plans that their ancestors must have had, the things they must have envisioned. Imagining that the early agrarians would have somehow predicted the massive population increases that resulted from their labours, that the inventor of writing would have foreseen the creations of the printing press and the leaps in science and cultural spread and preservation, that the creator of the telegraph would have known what the internet could be. The people using those things now didn’t understand them. They grew potatoes in their yards and rarely thought of the _sheer distance_ between the world they lived in and the world of the person who had planted that potato’s ancestor thousands of years ago. The meat that made their bodies might be similar, but the stories that lived inside them bore almost no resemblance to each other, beyond the instincts to network and build.

And that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? Networks. People always looked to those In Charge, the hostile force who had Planned All This, but the conspiracies almost never existed, and when they did they were small, banal things, invented by fellow humans. Usually, the true horror was that nobody was in charge. Every puppet was a manipulator, and some might have more power or competence than others, but this was largely incidental. No architect planned the Tower. Any sense of design was incidental, with builders simply building higher on whatever part of the Tower they happened to occupy. Any repairs were made on the fly, not to some grand design but because one of the small, narrow-viewed builders happened to notice a weakness and decided to shore it up. Other problems were not noticed at all, and pieces of the tower would collapse, and the rubble would form the support struts for the replacement built over it without the builders ever noticing. There was no one in control. There was no grand plan. There didn’t need to be.

How did such a system keep sustaining itself? Why didn’t it collapse entirely? It would, eventually.

It was violence, in a way. A mindless violence of a people against themselves and the world they were building. Small bursts of passionate violence, large patterns of dispassionate violence; it all came out the same. People made more people and made systems to increase their capacity to make even more people, more to rub up against each other and explode in death and violence. More to die to kindnesses, which was its own kind of violence, in its way. The engine produced joy which produced pain, love which produced fear. Construction _was_ destruction, synthesis _was_ catabolysis. It just depended which side of the process you happened to be looking at.

And it was _beautiful_.

Eager to see more, Martin climbed higher.

\---------------------------------

  
  


Basira got into the archives late, because she’d met with Elias. He was, of course, completely useless. Apparently his see-everything powers worked great when he was using them to antagonise them, but the instant they could be helpful, whoever had the book had hidden themselves from him. Typical.

Basira missed the days when she’d walk in, and Martin would make everyone a cup of tea. Not that she couldn’t make herself tea. She didn’t even like tea all that much. But it had been a grounding ritual, familiar and safe, something to affirm that everyone was present and get the day started. Now, of course, Martin was in a coma, so if she decided she really wanted a hot drink, she’d have to go to the tea room herself.

Jon was standing behind Sasha’s desk, peering over her shoulder at some files. Basira wondered if it was bad for him to be summoned this often. He seemed fine. Mary was typing away, as usual, and wearing a pair of oversized neon pink headphones, which was less usual. She looked up and took them off; the faint sounds of an adolescent boy singing about some man from Milwaukee bled through the room. “Hi, Basira! Any luck?”

“He’s useless, as always. What are you up to?”

“Checking the database for anyone who might possibly know anything about the book. People who serve the End, or trade in artefacts… so far almost everyone who might be useful is dead, and the others are untraceable.”

“No one’s untraceable.”

“Think you can find Jurgen Leitner? Or a statement giver who can see future deaths but gave a fake name and we have nothing else about him?”

“… Okay. That’s pretty untraceable.”

“ Wait, we have a statement giver who can see death? That’s great news!”  Sasha beamed. “If we have the statement number, we can use that to – hang on, I have to take this.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. A moment later it started to ring, and she answered. “What’s up, Tim? Who is – oh, those guys? Alright. Yeah, Basira just got in.” She hung up. “Tim’s on his way down with  the two new friends he  infiltrated that Dark house with. Apparently they know something about the book, so, great find there, I guess.”

S he’d barely finished speaking when Tim entered, followed by two of the most dangerous people Basira had ever seen, aside from Daisy – an old man and a woman, both lean and scarred.

“This place smelled less like blood last time,” the old man grumbled. His eyes locked on Jon.

“Everyone,” Tim announced, “This is Julia and Trevor. Julia, Trevor, welcome to the Archives. Oh, Jon’s out! Hi, Jon.”

Jon gave him a nod. “Tim says you two can help us find the book?”

“It rather looks like you already have it,” Julia said acidly. Basira noticed that she and Trevor lingered in the doorway, seemingly hesitant to enter the room.

“ Oh, no,” Sasha said, “we cut him out a while ago. It’s the rest of the book that’s missing. Someone’s… tied our friend to it, somehow, we think.”

“You think.”

“We’re pretty sure he had it on him when he went missing, he’s missing a patch of skin the size of a page and he’s showing up in Tim’s dreams covered in strips of leather written on in what we’re ninety per cent sure is Sanskrit,” Jon said.

J ulia glared at Tim. “You have prophetic dreams and you didn’t mention it?”

“Ah, no. No, this is a… special case. Look, I told you I’d had a weird dream.”

“But you didn’t – ”

“Jule,” Trevor said, almost too quietly for Basira to hear. She followed his gaze to Mary, who gave them both a bright, welcoming smile.

“It’s been great to meet you all,” Julia said, “but we really must be going now. Tim, a word?”

Tim glances between Julia and Mary, puzzled. Then he got it. “Oh! It’s fine, they know she’s a monster. She won’t hurt you.”

“I’m Mary!” Mary said brightly, over the sounds of Hanson still playing from the discarded headphones.

“We should go,” Julia said firmly, backing out of the room with Trevor.

“We made a bad first impression, didn’t we?” Jon sighed.

“Tim,” Sasha said, “be honest with me. Have they gone to stock up on weapons so they can come back and kill us all?”

“No! They’re not crazed murder – hm. I should probably go and talk to them?”

“As the only archival assistant who’s still a normal person,” Basira said, “I’ll come with you. Just remember that if they kill me, you’re out of a job.”

“Oh noooo, what would I do without a part-time PI job. I’d probably become homeless and live on junk food.”

“ Also Daisy would kill you.”

“Oh yeah. That’s a fair point.”

B asira followed Tim out. They caught up with the pair just outside the Institute.

Tim spoke first. “Juli – ”

“Don’t,” Julia growled. “Come any closer and we  _ will _ kill you.”

Tim didn’t move closer.

“You really had us goin’ there, kid,” Trevor said. “Right ‘til you decided to lure us into a den of monsters. Thought the book would be good bait, did ya?”

“ What? That’s – that’s not – ”

“Do you have any idea what things like, like that thing in there can do to a person?”

“Yes,” Tim snapped, voice suddenly sharp. “I’ve seen exactly what the Stranger’s children can do to a person. I’m not naive, Julia.”

“And yet you still decided to get chummy with them, which says a lot about what you are. Tell, me, the friend of yours I risked my life to save last night, he a monster, too?”

“No. Well, not… it’s complicated. Martin flinches if you look at him too sharply and catches spiders in cups to release outside. And takes the time to find a nice sheltered corner outside to release them in. Look, things aren’t as black and white as you’re making out, okay? This isn’t an ‘us and them, the Good Guys and the Evil Predators’ kind of situation.”

“Yeah, the ‘them always like to say stuff like that,” Trevor said. He glanced at Basira. “So what are you, then?”

“More human than you,” Basira snapped, then forced herself to calm down. Starting a fight here wouldn’t help anything. She’d been in Trevor and Julia’s position before; what had brought her around? Aside from the inescapable magical contract she’d been threatened into signing?

Oh, right. The apocalypse.

“Trevor. You mentioned in there, that you’d been down to the archives before?”

“Yeah. Gave my statement years ago, back when I was still doin’ vampires.”

“Vamp – you’re Trevor Herbert!”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you have advanced terminal lung cancer?”

He shrugged.

Yeah, okay. Not the time. “ Right. You would’ve met the old Head Archivist, right? A woman named Gertrude Robinson?”

“Yeah.”

“She was on a decades-long crusade to stop various evil powers from trying to destroy the world. A crusade that  she died before she could complete. Those people in that office – yes, including the ghost and the monster – are continuing that crusade.”

“How do you know the monster’s not trying to end the world?”

“Because it takes centuries to build up the power to try. If we stop them in the right way, they have to start again. That monster’s group tried a few years ago, and we stopped it – incidentally, that’s what killed Jon – so she needs to keep the world together for a few more centuries. And we need our current head Archivist back on his feet and doing his job. We would like your help for that. I’m not asking you to risk your lives, I know you have your own hunts in progress. I just want to know what you know about the book.”

“Where’d you get it?” Trevor asked. “The book?”

“We don’t know. It was delivered to Martin, no sender’s name, no return address.”

Trevor and Julia exchanged a glance.

“We want it back,” Julia said. “We’ll help you get it, we’ll even leave your little freak show alone so long as you stay out of our way, but we walk out of here with the book.”

“Provided you let us free our friend from it first, fine. It’s yours.”

“Martin’s going to be pissed,” Tim commented. “He still wants to save everyone in there.”

“Martin’s going to be alive, so I don’t give a shit. There’s plenty of living people for him to save if he gets bored.”

They shook on it.  Basira relaxed.

They could do this. They could save Martin.


	104. Chapter 104

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody manages to actually talk to Melanie.

Statement #0151203; Antonio Blake. The name was fake, but the statement number told Sasha what day he’d been in, and that was all she needed.

Step one: go and request the security footage for that day. Step two: be told no. Step three: wait until late at night, then break into storage and get the footage when no one was around. Most businesses didn’t keep security footage for years on end, but most businesses weren’t run by a servant of the Eye with a compulsive need to hoard information of all kinds.

Step four: realise you don’t have anything to play the tapes on. Run home and get the player that Tim, um, acquired, a few nights ago.

Fast forwarding through footage of the corridor leading to the archives got her what she needed. Only two people turned toward the archives that day, and one of them was Gertrude Robinson. The other, a tall, handsome black man who looked nervous and kind of shifty as he rushed down the corridor, must be their Antonio Blake.

She couldn’t get a perfectly clear image of his face from the footage, but she did her best. Now to her software-that-didn’t-exist.

She ran her images of the man’s face against facebook photos. Sixty three matches, probably because the image wasn’t clear enough.

Narrow for people who lived in London at 2015, or who didn’t specify their location. Twenty one matches. Narrow for people who attended the London School of Economics, or who didn’t list their school. Seventeen, mostly those who didn’t list a school.

Fine. You want to play that way? Fine.

Searching for death certificates was easy, if you knew how to get into the system. Men who died of a heart attack on New year’s Eve 2014. Cross-reference the list of surnames with the facebook profiles. It wasn’t one hundred per cent reliable, given the propensity for people to change their surnames, not adopt their fathers’ surnames in the first place, or simply use false names on Facebook, but if this didn’t work she could start trawling through birth certificates.

It did work, though. Bennett Banks had died that day, survived by a son, Oliver Banks, who did have – although he rarely used – Facebook. According to his statement, he’d tried to save one Archivist already.

She just hoped that he was up for saving another.

\------------------------------

  
  


Trevor walked beside Julia as they made their way back to the motel. He’d seen this expression on her face before, and he never knew what to say.

“I’m sorry, Jule,” he tried.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s… look, we had no way of knowing he was gonna turn out to be – ”

“He’s not. He’s just misled. Once we deal with the monsters, he’ll come around.”

“You’re probably right,” Trevor lied. “But if he doesn’t – ”

“I know.”

They continued their walk in silence. Julia was still afraid of the dark, Trevor knew, and she’d waded through it for that guy, to help save his friend. It wasn’t the first time she’d done something like that to take down monsters and it wouldn’t be the last, but still, she’d done it. Trevor had never looked for the kinds of relationships that he knew Julia wanted with a guy someday, but he could see how much it hurt on her face.

Well, nothing to be done about it now. Their mission was to get their book back, kill as many of those Institute monsters as they could get away with, and get out alive. And however things shook out with Tim… well. He’d just have to decide what side he was on. That was out of Trevor’s hands.

Not for the first time, Trevor wished he were young again. Things had been so much simpler when he’d thought that the only things out there were vampires.

\----------------------------

  
  


Mary stared blankly at her computer screen. She couldn’t summon the focus to type a statement into the database like she was supposed to be doing. What was some story about an idiot who kept waking up with pig organs in his bed going to do to help them find Martin? Not even Taylor Hanson’s delightful voice assuring her that every minute was like an hour to him if she wasn’t there was doing anything to comfort her. Good thing that was just poetic license, because if the Hanson brothers really had been caught in some time-distorting manifestation of the Spiral, she certainly couldn’t be counted on to save them. She couldn’t save anyone these days.

“You should move in with us,” she said to Sasha.

Sasha looked up from her own computer and blinked in surprise. “What?”

“You and Basira and Melanie, if Melanie’s… compatible. Clearly I can’t protect Martin by myself, If we were all together all the time, things like this wouldn’t happen.”

“I think Basira’s quite happy living alone with Daisy.”

“Tim, then! He needs a house, right? We’ll find somewhere big on the edge of town and then nobody will be able to get kidnapped.”

“I’m sure Tim could have a place if he wanted. He chooses to live in the tunnels because he thinks it’s safer. He probably would be safer in a group, though… it’s worth thinking about.”

“Good. Then Martin will be safe.”

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

“What?”

“That the Dark got him. They were probably waiting for an opportunity for ages.”

“And I gave them one. And they took it.”

“Mary, you can’t watch him every – ”

“I can, and I didn’t. I only ever really guarded him when we came here. Basira thinks Elias is trying to sacrifice him in the Institute, so I figured okay, that’s where he was in danger, but outside of work hours I had no idea where he was half the time! We were lucky he was grabbed on the way home. He could’ve been grabbed a dozen other times and we’d have had no idea where or when, and no leads! And then – ”

“And then we’d be in this exact same situation,” Sasha said calmly. “Whoever took him dropped him off outside the hospital aft – ” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t even think to check the hospital for security cameras! Thank you, dystopian surveillance state!” She pulled out a small laptop and started typing away. “They’d be idiots to store their footage online of course, but you’d be amazed how much sensitive data hospitals store online.”

“There are enough cameras around for you to use, then?”

“Probably. I mean, not as many as I’d like. If Elias were serious about generating the fear of Beholding in London he would’ve blackmailed politicians into three or four times as many, controlled from a central location, but I only need one shot of someone carrying Martin. This’ll probably take hours, since we don’t know where exactly he was dropped off or when, but if we’re lucky...”

Mary peeked over her shoulder. “You know the computer’s not on, right?”

“It can’t turn on, it’s broken,” she said distractedly, still apparently using it. “Everything inside’s fried. From the first time I tried to do something like this, I think. It’s a pity, I had a Minesweeper winning streak going.”

“… Right.” Mary could sense the fear Sasha was wrapping about the computer, but it had nothing to do with her kind of fear, and she couldn’t make sense of it. So long as Sasha was getting decent results, she supposed.

She went to check on Melanie instead. Melanie wanted to be left alone, of course, but she hadn’t been responding to any of their Turtle Run messages and nobody had actually seen her around. What if she’d been taken by someone, too? Thrown back into Peter’s Lonely dimension?

Anyway, her standoffishness was starting to annoy Mary. She was part of the team! They’d eaten pizza and gone ghost hunting together!

The hall around Melanie’s office was eerily quiet. Mary peeked into a few offices and found them empty. Melanie’s office was easily distinguished not by a nameplate – there were no nameplates on any of the offices – but by the strong lock on the door. From inside, Mary heard the passionate cadence of someone recording a statement; she waited for her to finish, then knocked.

After about thirty seconds of knocking produced no results, she broke the lock and came in.

Melanie glared at her, fear spiking. And it was different, very different, to the fear that Mary remembered on Melanie. There was a lot of it, there had always been a lot of it – Melanie seemed to consider everything in her life a threat – but while once she would have turned that into an anger that she could tolerate better than fear or insecurity, now she wrapped it around herself in the other direction, in a desperate desire to get away. Except nothing in her body language suggested any desire or intention to get away; she just glared. It took Mary a moment to realise – she wanted Mary to go away.

That was fine. People generally wanted Mary to go away. That’s what Mary was _for_.

“Hello, Melanie. I haven’t seen you around much.”

“I’ve been busy. Do you need something?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.” She gestured at herself, like her presence was proof. “Just really busy.”

“We haven’t heard from you much.” Mary couldn’t very well come out and say ‘you’re not answering Turtle Run notifications’, not when Elias might be watching.

“Yeah. Sorry. Just busy.”

“Doing statements, I see?”

“Well, someone has to. Apparently the Archivist isn’t, so – ”

Apparently she hadn’t been reading her Turtle Run notifications either, because Mary was certain she wasn’t the only one who’d notified her about Martin. “Oh. You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Martin’s in hospital. In a coma.”

Melanie leapt to her feet. “He what?!”

“He got kidnapped and we think he’s… bound, somehow, to the ghost book? Even though he’s still alive? And now we’ve got to find whoever has the book, which means hunting down who did it to him – ”

“What ghost book?”

“You know, the ghost book. Where Jon – oh, do you know about Jon?”

“What about – ? No, look, this doesn’t… I can’t… is there anything I can do to help here?”

“Maybe. I mean, we’re bouncing ideas around and – ”

“Anything specific that you need from me?”

“Well… no.”

“Then it isn’t any of my business.” She sat down. “Mary, I can’t get involved in every bit of drama you guys have. The last time I did that, I was the one who put Martin in hospital.”

“Then don’t stab anyone. Come down, share knowledge, and just don’t do any stabbing.”

“Things are more complicated than that.”

“Complicated how?”

“Just complicated.”

“Right. If you don’t want me to know what you’re doing, fine. But _you_ at least know what you’re doing, right?”

“Do any of us ever know what they’re doing?”

“Melanie.”

“Mary, everything’s… neither of us are helping each other by you being here. Just go. Please.”

“Right.” Melanie left. _I have a lot more to learn about humans_ , she thought as she strode through the empty corridor, _because I have no idea what any of that was about_.


	105. Chapter 105

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team enlists some outside help.

Sasha finished her third double-strength espresso for the night and wished she was at home, using her far superior coffee machine. Unfortunately, whatever eldritch gifts had allowed her to hack into the hospital’s recorded security data only seemed to work on the Institute’s internet, which she didn’t want to think too hard about in case figuring out how little sense any of this made would make it stop working. She knew that was unlikely – people wouldn’t keep getting eaten by bugs and trapped in impossible mazes if such things could be dispelled with logic – but she also knew how few of their statements involved anything with modern technology. The odd cursed website, a myth of a guy who’d uploaded himself and appeared on screens forcing a woman to watch him eating his computer… cases existed, but they weren’t common.

She understood why. She understood that the fear worked how people thought the fear worked, and in terms of the spookiness of old vs. new technology, humanity outvoted her.  Coders could carve out little niches of horror in the areas they understood, and so, it seemed, could she, but if there were ever a situation where Sasha’s methods and the Institute’s methods came into conflict in some way, if there was a scenario in which only one of them could be true, she knew which method would prevail.

So it was best not to think too hard on it. She looked at  hospital footage over the Institute internet until the sun started to come up again, and found… nothing. Whoever had dropped Martin off had done so out of the range of the cameras.

Well, that was a waste of time.  God, she needed sleep.

“Hold on, Martin,” she murmured, closing her laptop. “We’ll figure this out.”

\----------------------

  
  


Basira double-checked the address that Sasha had scrawled down for her and knocked on the shabby apartment door. A stressed-looking man answered, looking her up and down. “Hello?”

“Good morning, sir. Are you Oliver Banks?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Basira Hussain. I’m a private investigator.” She went to hand him her card, but he flinched back.

“I just picked up Dr Pritchard’s ID,” he said quickly. “I have no idea what happened to him.”

Basira blinked. “Sorry, who?”

There was an awkward pause.

“No one,” Oliver said, unconvincingly. “What can I do for you?”

“A few years ago, you gave a statement to the Magnus Institute.”

“No I didn’t. You must be thinking of Anto – of someone else.”

Basira raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine. What are you here to accuse me of?”

“Um. Nothing?”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“ No. I’m here to ask for your help.”

“I don’t do death predictions. Death is inevitable, so it seems… cruel.”

“No, no. A friend of mine is in a coma. He’s been mystically bound to this weird ghost book – we don’t know how or why – and we’re pretty sure it’s keeping him comatose. We’re trying to find it. I know this isn’t really your wheelhouse, but I thought maybe your ability to see these…. Death root things… might help. If you’re willing to try, I can pay a consultancy fee.” Basira was a bit worried about Melanie, but she had to admit, there were serious perks to having Melanie doing the Institute’s payroll and expense reports.

O liver, like sensible people everywhere, brightened at the prospect of easy money. “ Let me get my coat.”

\---------------------------

  
  


Martin climbed to the very top of the tower. The light warmed him as he stood under an open sky, and looked up.

And immediately regretted his decision.

Below him stretched the Tower, unbelievably tall, but above…

The Tower was made of things that humans did, and were, and understood. It was made of things that humans could not do, so they enlisted other things to do them. Could not be, so they dreamed of being. Could not understand, so they pinned them to words and numbers and other symbols in a facsimile of understanding.

Which meant that anything left, anything still stretching above into the infinite space above the Tower, had not yet been built into. These were things that human minds, not even in aggregate, not even as a society or using all of their art and mathematics and computers, could not comprehend on a basic level. They were… they did not exist yet. There was nothing there.

Nothing but space. A forever, to build into, it looked like; just looking at it made it impossible to breathe as Martin automatically tried to comprehend the size of it on any level, and failed. Even the safe, faux-understanding of the word ‘infinite’ didn’t apply; he had no idea if it was infinite. Somehow, that was scarier; an infinite space was a special case, not really large. But something finitely big, something with real borders that could never be reached…

Martin vaguely recalled what something inside the Tower had said to one of the builders, once. “Humans are afraid of both the finite and the infinite. It is very puzzling.” It was, he supposed.

He also recalled a time when the builder had gotten high, in the very brief part of its life when it had had the time and money for such things, and laid back on the grass at night and started crying with the realisation that its designations of ‘up’ and ‘down’ were based on the whim of a universe of matter that just so happened to be attracted to itself, and were essentially arbitrary. The ground wasn’t a floor, in any real sense; it was a surface that the builder was stuck to, for now, and if anything happened to gravity the builder would have fallen away, thrown by the rotation of the Earth and the sudden expansion of all that gas being held close to it, dropped down, down into an infinity below while scrabbling desperately for the safety of the Earth receding into the sky.

Martin tore his gaze away from the abyss above and looked down. Over the edge of the Tower.

Whatever great tree the long, pulsating black roots that snaked over the landscape belonged to, Martin couldn’t see it. He saw the way they encircled the base of the Tower, finding purchase in little cracks in the walls, twisting around the lower levels. In a real building, this kind of root infestation would be a major structural problem, but Martin wasn’t worried. He knew that something as trivial as death couldn’t harm the Tower; people died all the time, and were replaced by more. Eventually humanity would, presumably, die out, but death on that scale would be the result of the Tower’s collapse, not the cause of it. 

The death he saw was not the death inside the Tower, which was presumably working away just fine. Like the abyss above, like Martin himself, these roots were outside the Tower. The couldn’t get in, any more than Martin could – he could go back downstairs, of course, but that wouldn’t put him inside the Tower any more than closing your fist around a coin put the coin inside your body.

These roots were here for Martin. And they would keep growing, getting closer, and there was nowhere for him to run.

Martin sat down, and waited.

\--------------------------

  
  


“ Your lock’s broken,” Peter noted.

Melanie weighed the risks of lying, and decided that Peter probably already knew and this might be a test. “Mary came to see me.”

“Ah. Yes, being like her can be… difficult to handle. You seem to be otherwise protecting yourself well enough, but if she’s going to cause problems for you, I can move you to an office in – ”

“It’s fine,” Melanie said, reading between the lines. Could Peter not use his powers on Mary? Was she immune? Maybe – she couldn’t read statements or use Leitners or anything. But Melanie was pretty sure that Elias could read Mary’s mind, so maybe not? Worth keeping in mind, anyway. If it came down to it, Mary might be able to keep herself safe. “Was she telling the truth about Martin?”

“If she told you that he’s currently comatose in hospital, then yes.”

“And you didn’t think to  _ tell me _ this?”

“I’m not one for office gossip, Melanie. It’s hardly secret information; if you wanted to keep tabs on him, you were perfectly capable of doing so yourself. I can find you his room number, if you’d like to visit him?”

Another test, probably. What answer did he want? “Would that help him wake up?”

“No.”

“Then what would be the point?”

Peter didn’t quite manage to hide his little smile. She’d passed; good. “Of course, if he doesn’t wake up – ”

“Then you would’ve lost two Archivists on your watch, which I’m sure Elias would be thrilled to hear.”

“To be fair, while the previous Archivist technically died after I arrived, the inciting incident was before my time. And the current Archivist has a whole team of people to protect him.”

“Which you poached me from.”

“Thus rather neatly protecting the Archivist from you, yes?”

Melanie blushed, then felt a wave of anger at this man entering her space, making her feel stupid. Peter took a full step back, as people usually did hen she got annoyed at them.

“You really are doing very well, you know.”

“What?”

“ At developing the sort of… mindset… that you’re going to need to save the world.”

“Are you finally ready to stop being so cagey about what exactly your plan is?”

“Cagey? What do you mean?”

Melanie glared at him.

“Oh, you wanted information! You could have just asked, you know. Well. We have enough evidence to take the threat of Dekker’s Extinction very seriously, and I believe that its emergence will be truly devastating for the world. I was able to, ah, borrow a prophetic Leitner from storage, and the young man I managed to convince to read the relevant parts for me called it the Collapse and made it sound quite devastating indeed, but was unable to give me anything specific in terms of a timeline, or what to do about it. So, I believe that we’re looking at two potential plans here.”

“Two plans.”

“Yes, but only one viable one. The obvious way to avoid the Extinction would of course be to complete a fear ritual first, but we can’t do this, because my Lonely ritual failed quite recently and it’ll be at least a century or two before we have the power to try again. I doubt we have that much time and, obviously, letting some other fear ritual succeed simply isn’t on the cards. Which means our hopes rely on… you!”

Oh god, had this man ever explained anything to anyone before. You’d think someone who hated being around people would  _ get to the point _ so he could leave faster. “To do what, exactly?”

“Well. There is a device. It grants the user great power; specifically, the power to  _ see anything _ . A Beholding device, obviously, which means I cannot simply find and use it myself. I suspect that any attempt to do so without at least a moderate connection to the Eye would end very messily indeed. But, if I can find it, and if somebody with a connection to the Eye and the Lonely were to use it… well, with that, I believe that we could get some proper details on what to expect about the rate and manner of the emergence of the Extinction and, I hope, form a plan on how to stop it.”

“ So your plan is to get enough information to make a plan?”

“I never promised that things would be simple.”

“This place is a giant temple to the Eye, and it seems happy to mark up anyone with anything. If you want to use the thing yourself, just nip down into artefact storage and muck about with something with an eyeball on it and pray you’ll survive.”

“Ah… no. That wouldn’t work. Firstly because it’s a very dangerous way to get marked, and second because if it did work, it wouldn’t be enough. This requires a true, proper connection, and once you’ve… reached a certain  threshold ,  in terms of commitment to a patron, the others…  it wouldn’t work.”

“I don’t have any real connection to the Eye, either. I’ve always hated this place.”

“And yet you did sign the contract, twice. You are bound to it. And you’ve read a truly impressive amount of statements! Your tolerance for channelling them for the Eye has grown remarkably since you’ve been up here.”

Oh. Melanie had assumed that the statements were just Peter being coy about the Extinction thing.

Apparently not.

“ This device – ”

“I’m still investigating the details,” Peter said quickly. “Just know that it won’t be long now. You don’t have time for distractions, especially not the melodrama going on in that basement. You need to make yourself ready to save the world.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oliver Banks is a terrible liar don't @ me


	106. Chapter 106

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Further investigations take place.

“ Okay,” Tim said, pacing across Daisy’s living room floor and pretending not to notice how Trevor, Julia and Daisy were sizing each other up like hungry leopards who’d happened on the same kill and were trying to decide whether they could share it peacefully or would have to get the first strike in. “So, our timeline for the book: Mary Keay took it off some hack doctor con artist when she was a child. She died, and held onto it with Gerard for awhile, then Gertrude took it and killed her properly. Then Gerard died, Gertrude bound him in it but got caught by police, it ended up in a police evidence locker for awhile, went missing from there and maybe six months later you found it in the hands of… you said some kind of voodoo priest?”

“Weren’t actually voodoo,” Trevor said. “Honourable tradition and all that. Just some wannabe zombie lord.”

“Riiight. So you used it to question some of the ghosts about various kinds of monsters. Did you learn anything about actually using the book from them? Binding ghosts and such?”

“Nah. We’re looking to get rid of monsters, not make more of ‘em.”

“Then,  while  you were  hunting down a Leitner – sorry, a magic book – that burned the reader’s eyes out when you were robbed, losing the book in the process. And then  _ someone _ bound our deceased former Archivist into it and sent it to the new Archivist via Breekon and Hope.”

“What is Breekon and Hope?” Julia asked.

“Evil monster delivery company,” Daisy said. “Does the skin have to be… fresh? To bind someone? Is this the sort of thing that would need to happen really soon after Sims’ death? Because if so, that tells us the book was already in London not too long after the Unknowing, at the least. But it wasn’t sent to the Institute until much later.”

“Good question. Are we assumin g that whoever bound Jon  also did this to Martin? If so, why give the book to Martin at all in the meantime? Is there some kind of… I don’t know, acclimatisation to the book he had to… ugh, we need an expert on this!”

“I thought you were our expert,” Daisy joked. “Didn’t you used to work in publishing?”

“ Yeah, but not in the Weird Ghost Books market. They were never big sellers.”

“So what do we know that we can actually use?” Julia asked in that tense tone she got when she was starting to get impatient.

E veryone went quiet. They all looked at each other.

Nothing. They had nothing.

\-------------------------------

  
  


** K ingofGhosts has sent you a puzzle! **

Sasha read shift 3 ceasars fluently (one of the “traditional” shifts that made good puzzles for small children put in the care of bored hackers who didn’t know much about childrearing), so she could decode the message very quickly to LUKASPLANWANTSMETOUSEMAGICALDEVICETOSTOP, and had to wait about ten minutes for the second half of the message, which translated to NEWFEARPOWER FROM EMERGING. 

Well.

Every single part of that sounded really fucking ominous.

Sasha sent a quick puzzle asking Melanie if she needed any help. Help was refused. Which, fine, Sasha had her plate full with the whole ‘saving Martin again’ thing, but a ‘new fear power emerging’ sounded like something they could probably do with some more information on. As did whatever this ‘magical device’ was. And why Peter Lukas needed Melanie for it. And Peter Lukas in general, more information on him would be great.

Sasha tried to inquire further. Melanie sent a message saying she’d update her when she had more information. Sasha though that she had to have more information than she’d given, but Melanie had turned her phone off by the time Sasha started formulating a reply.

Ooookay then. Put that on the ‘potential pending crisis’ pile, along with every other fucking thing in the world, and move on.

The door to the archives opened. Sasha looked up, expecting Mary coming back from lunch, but it was Basira, trailing a man that Sasha recognised from facebook stalking him the previous night. “Hi! It’s Oliver, right?” She smiled. “I’m Sasha.”

“Uh, hi,” Oliver said not seeming to want to look at her. Or at anything in the room. Sasha tried not to think too hard about why the archives would make someone who could see death look so uncomfortable, and just shot Basira a questioning look.

“We tried to scope out the hospital but he couldn’t pick up anything,” she shrugged. “We don’t know if he can’t see the book or if it’s just because it’s, y’know, a hospital.”

“A lot of people die in hospitals,” Oliver explained. “It’s hard to make out anything in particular.”

“Right,” Sasha said. “Hang on, according to your statement you have to be asleep to – ”

“Not any more. Can we get this over with? I have laundry to do today.”

“We thought,” Basira said, “that he might be able to pick up some kind of… link, maybe… from Jon’s page. It’s in the office?”

“Yeah. Oh, we should probably wake him up. Can you imagine how prickly he’d get if we found the book without him?”  She rushed ahead into the office to read Jon’s death, since doing it made the others feel uncomfortable. Basira had once pointed out that it felt kind of personal to read someone’s final thoughts and experiences, but Sasha didn’t see what the big deal was – Jon was the one who kept wanting to be summoned and updated on the situation.

O liver may have been uncomfortable with the archives as a whole, but he won the award for Least Phased By A Ghost.  He glanced at Jon like one might notice a slightly unusual painting on the wall,  completely disregarded his existence , and beelined straight for the framed page. After about a minute of intense focus, he shook his head. “I’m not seeing anything on this. Sorry.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” Basira shrugged. “ Thanks, Oliver.”

“Anything else I can do?”

“No, I… I can’t think of anything.”

“Right, I’ll be off, then. Good luck with your… death book thing.”

They watched him go.

“You know,” Sasha remarked, “if I were approached by a random PI and asked to help find a ghost book, I’d probably be a lot more curious about the whole thing.”

“Yeah, well, you’re you.”

“What, like you wouldn’t be?”

“Maybe. But I think if I saw how the people around me were going to die I’d be less curious in general.”

“ I guess.”

The door to the archives opened once more, and once more, it wasn’t Mary. It was a twitchy looking young man. He glanced around the archives, looking too lost to be a new researcher. Sasha hoisted her Customer Service Smile in place.

“Hi! Are you here to make a statement?”

“ Uh, yeah. The, the lady at the front desk said to come down here?”

“Sasha here can take it,” Basira said quickly. Sasha shot her betrayed look that she hoped was too subtle for the man to notice, and in response, Basira gestured to the little breast pocket where she kept her PI business cards. Right; she wasn’t working for the archives today. How very convenient.

“Right this way,” Sasha said, and had lead the man into the head archivist’s office before remembering that she had not dismissed Jon. She caught a glimpse of him ducking out of sight behind the movable corkboard wall that had a calendar on the visible side and the Fears Concept Map on the hidden side. Unfortunately, the man seemed to have noticed the movement, too.

“Is someone – ?”

“Just a trick of the light,” Sasha said hurriedly. “Happens all the time down here. Fluorescent lighting, lack of windows… you know how it is.”

The man’s face suggested that he did not, in fact, know how it is, but he sat down without further comment.

“ Now, we can record your statement on tape, or you can write it down – which would you prefer?”

“Does it, um, make a difference?”

“Not really, we make audio and written versions anyway. It’s just whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

“I think we should do tape, then. I think… I think talking about it would be best.”

“Alright!” Sasha pulled out the tape recorder and popped a fresh tape in. The man stared.

“Oh, you’re using actual, literal tape?”

“Tape and digital,” Sasha said, pulling out a laptop she hadn’t broken via impossible hacking and opening the recording software. “You wouldn’t believe how out-of-date some of the system in these old research institutes are. Some of our machines actually do still read from magnetic tape, so it’s just easier to do both. So. Your name?”

“Um, John. John Michaels.”

“Statement of John Michaels, regarding…?”

“Regarding the zombie living under my barbecue pit.”

Sasha stared. It was just going to be one of those days, apparently.

\----------------------

  
  


“ So this is the plan? Just to sit here and wait for the End?”

Martin didn’t bother to turn and see who was talking to him. He knew he was talking to himself – he was the only one there. “If I have a better idea,” he replied testily, “I’d very much like to know what it is.”

“There’s not much to see here, is all. I’m – ”

“I know!” Martin leapt to his feet. I’ve seen everything in there, and I can’t see the dreams any more, even though I know they’re happening, and I can’t get back into the tower, so unless there’s some other location here I don’t know about…” He kicked at the stones of the Tower, like he could force his way back into the stones.

Martin sighed. “I can’t hurt the Tower. I’ll only hurt myself doing that. This isn’t actually the – ”

“I  _ know _ I’m trapped in my own head, I’m not an  _ idiot _ . Trappe d in some stupid hallucination of my mum’s fairytale, being a life force battery for Mary Fucking Keay.” He grimaced. “Perhaps I should grow my hair really long and wait for a prince to come and climb it and save me.”

“Well, my Prince is already dead, so – ”

Martin blushed. “Hey, that’s… I mean…”

“A great advantage, considering the terrain.” He gestured to the network of roots stretching out below him. “Any minute now, the ghost of Jonathan Sims will come barrelling across the lands on a skeleton horse to save me. Better get to work growing that hair.”

“Jesus, I’m lame.” The roots looked far away, still down near the base of the Tower, and Martin knew that when they reached high enough to touch him, he would die; but they were, like everything else in this place, a metaphor. He could feel the hooks of death already inside him, draining his energy bit by bit, siphoning it into whatever Mary Keay was doing.

“ There’s another option,” he told himself.

“Yeah.” If he were feeling particularly spiteful, he could step off the edge and drop down into those roots himself. It probably wouldn’t even hurt. Mary would lose her power source, which she certainly deserved. Martin would die, of course, but wasn’t he dead already, in this place with no way out and nothing to experience, nothing to see, nothing to build? Everything else was just… waiting.

Instead, he sat back down.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because… something still might happen. When the roots get here. Or there might be something else here I haven’t noticed. If I die now… I won’t get to see whatever happens next.”


	107. Chapter 107

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Michaels has had a weird day.

“Okay,” Sasha said, “how about you start from the beginning?”

“Beginning? Where’s the beginning? There’s a zombie living under my barbecue pit! I don’t know how long it’s been there. I mean, as long as the pit, right? Which is before I moved in when I bought the house last year – ”

“How did you discover the, um, zombie?”

“Oh. Someone dug it up last night. Well, part of it. The rest has gotta be down there, though.”

Sasha rubbed her temples. “Okay. What happened last night?”

“Right, so I was at home playing WoW, and it was… I dunno, maybe eleven? Dark, anyway. And I could hear this rhythmic clunking, like a hammering or chipping sound, outside. I ignored it for a bit, but then I realised it was coming from my own yard. So I look out of my bedroom window, right. And I couldn’t see anything, because of the angle.”

He paused, as if waiting for a response, so Sasha said, “Go on.”

“Right, so I go to the back door instead, and I see the back of this little guy in a trenchcoat. He had the weirdest hairstyle I’d ever seen, short and black and just full of weird bald patches? But I can’t see anythign else about him, except that he’s got a pickaxe, and he’s just chipping away at my barbecue pit! I can’t make out any details. The moon’s out, but it’s cloudy? So I just kind of… stare for awhile. Like, I’m not going to confront this dude, he’s got a pickaxe. I go back inside to call the police, and then I go back to watching him, from the doorway. He’d gotten through a lot of concrete before I’d shown up, so it wasn’t long before he’d dug all the way down to the dirt. Then he crouched down and started burrowing through it with his hands.

“I found myself walking closer. Like, he was obviously looking for something, and I had no idea what could be down there. I knew I should be afraid, but it had stopped feeling totally real to me, you know? So I kind of found myself circling around for a better view, without thinking about it? And I see the guy’s face, and realise it’s actually a little old woman. And she doesn’t have patchy hair, she’s bald, and her head and hands are covered in these weird spiky black tattoos. So I’m properly weird out, right? But then I see her reach down into the dirt, and it’s like she’s, she’s struggling with something down there? Like she’s trying to free something that’s tangled up or something. And she pulls this little leather bag out of the ground, a bit smaller than a fist maybe, and tucks it into her pocket. Then she looks up at me, and I suddenly realise how fucking dangerous it was to come outside. I freeze, and she smiles the most… the weirdest smile I’ve ever seen. Like, I just knew then that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if she wanted? And I had no idea if she wanted to, I mean whatever I’d seen had to be weird enough that she didn’t want witnesses, right?”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I ran inside, of course. I locked the door, and I called the police again, and they said someone was already on their way, and I barricaded myself in my room and didn’t come out until the sun was well and truly up. If the police did come, I didn’t see them, but the old woman was gone in the morning. So I, I figured I should fill in the hole. Put the dirt back, you know? I’d probably have to hire someone to do the bricks and concrete. But when I went out there, I saw what the woman had been struggling with.” He swallowed. “There was a corpse buried under the barecue pit. A lot of exposed bone, but with some rotting flesh still on it. And it was _moving_. It looked like she’d only uncovered its arm, to get whatever it was holding in the bag I guess, but during the night it had been digging its way out. All of it left arm and head was exposed, and some of its right arm, and it looked up at me except it didn’t have any eyes. It opened its mouth like it wanted to say something, and it didn’t have any tongue either. Scariest shit I’ve ever seen.”

“And then you came here?”

“No, I called the police again. This time someone actually showed up. Took forever though. But I wasn’t going to wait around to see what they did with that thing, so I googled what to do about stuff like this and you guys came up. Then I came here. I’m not going back until I’m sure the police are done.”

“Right. Thank you, Mr Michaels. We’ll follow this up. Would you like to be kept informed of what we find?”

“Hell no.”

“Alright. One last question. This bald woman, with the spiky black tattoos.” Sasha withdrew a piece of paper from the desk’s drawer; a sketch of some of the letters that Tim had seen on Martin’s blindfold that the team had identified as (poorly copied, probably on Tim’s part) Sanskrit. “Did they look like this?”

“Yeah! Spiky letters like that.”

“Right. Thank you.”

He left, and Jon came out of hiding. Sasha checked the digital recording, and was entirley unsurprised to find it corrupted.

“That was worryingly incoherent,” Jon commented.

Sasha shrugged. “It’s one of the more understandable ones we’ve gotten recently, actually. When Martin’s around and intending to listen to the tape right after they come out quite well, but when he isn’t… Anyway. The woman.”

“Mary Keay, we have to assume. But Martin said that according to Gerard, Gertrude destroyed her.”

“Well I guess there must’ve been a miscommunication somewhere along that chain because I doubt there’s any other Sanskrit-covered bald women digging up dead stuff. What do you think was in – ?”

“Dice,” Jon said instantly.

“Dice?”

“Bone dice. The… Grim Reapers, I suppose they are?… carry them, for their games. I don’t know what she wants them for, though. Something immortality-related, I suppose – immortality was her goal, wasn’t it?”

“You look unimpressed.”

“Life is for the living, there’s no reason to hoard more of it. But if her plan requires undead artefacts, maybe that gives us somewhere to look. If we can find something she might need?”

“And it gives us her location last night. We know she’s still in London, and was at – ah, fuck!”

“What?”

“I forgot to ask that guy his address.”

Jon stared. “You took a statement about an actual zombie in London and didn’t get the location of the zombie activity?”

“I didn’t think!”

“You’re supposed to be the smart one!”

“It’s fine, we can deal with this.” She pulled out her Spooky Laptop and quickly located the unfamiliar mobile phone that had just been in the archives and tagged it. Now she’d know where he was. Then she skimmed the internet for houses bought in the London area by a John Michaels the previous year, and found him within a minute or so.

“There were less invasive ways to get that information,” Jon noted.

“I’m not chasing a guy down the street for his address when I have the internet right here.”

“… Hmm.”

“Hey, people violating the sacred boundary between the living and the dead don’t get to give the judgy eyes,” Sasha grinned.

“I… well, yes. I suppose I am doing that, aren’t I.”

Aww shit. “No, Jon, I… I was just joking. Don’t take anything I say seriously.” As if it was possible for Jon not to take something seriously.

“I understand. Let’s just focus on finding the book. If we can try to locate any other death artefacts  that Mary might – ”

Sasha finished texting the others the recent updates and cut him off. “Jon.”

“What?”

“Do you want to… talk? About – ” she gestured vaguely at his ghost body.

Jon sighed. “I’ve told you before, Sasha, there is no need to worry about me. I’m already de – ”

“I’m already working on it, Sasha; I’m fine, Sasha; I’m just very busy, Sasha; I’m focusing on the apocalypse, Sasha; I’m just tired, Sasha. Using your own actual death to deflect concern is indeed a step up from your older excuses, but come on.  Do you think we stopped caring about you just because you’re dead?”

“It would be a lot easier if you had. I’m not going to be around forev – ”

“Neither are any of us! And when any of us are – Jesus, Jon, when you died, what do you think any of us thought? Do you think we sat around musing, ‘well, thank goodness he didn’t let any of us get too close so we don’t have to be too sad’?”

“Well, I mean, it would have been worse if – ”

“Fucking hell! How can you be so –? You know, when you were alive, I used to think Martin was the bar for low self esteem, and you were just an arse. Now, I’m mostly baffled that the Lonely didn’t eat you up before the Eye got a chance. You can’t just… just sit there and refuse to interact with anyone, and bottle up all of your problems and pain away from even yourself and figure ‘oh, if I can’t see them, they may as well not exist, problem solved’. It’s not a bad thing to share with people who care about you.”

“I do share!” Jon protested. “I had a very productive conversation with Mary just yesterday.”

“Oh, the one person among us who has no experience being human and can’t properly understand or empathise with anything you say.”

“Mary is perfectly capable of understanding a lot more than I think you realise.”

“But she’s never dealt with most of what the rest of us have dealt with, has she? She’s barely figured out how to like things.  There’s no real risk of progress or being known with – ”

“ And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Forcing people to be known.” He gestured at her Spooky Laptop, like it was some kind of gotcha, but Sasha just smiled.

“And you should know how much I like a challenge, right? Jon… after you died, and we thought Tim had died, everyone was a wreck. We… we tried to prop each other up, you know? Like, we all broke in different ways, and relied on each other to… well, there were sleepovers and movie nights involved. And we cleaned out your office, and there’d be like, little things, you know? Like little scraps of paper where you’d drawn different kinds of flowers, and we had no idea that you were into flowers.”

“I’m not,” he shrugged. “They’re… they were… just something I always found very easy to draw.”

“Well, I can tell you, none of us felt better for not knowing you all that well. Especially without Tim there. I mean, I’d known Tim pretty well, and when he… well. He’d known you better than the rest of us, so his absence wasn’t just his absence, it was like we’d lost the chance to know more of you. That was everyone’s biggest regret. Two of ours, gone, and there were so many parts of them that we didn’t know, so many things we could’ve done together and hadn’t, and now the chance for any of that was gone forever. And now you’ve both got a second chance, and you’re not doing that to us again. So _ tell me what the fuck is wrong _ .”

“…  Fine,” Jon relented. “Fine. Let’s, let’s talk.”


	108. Chapter 108

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon tries valiantly to express some level of emotional depth.

Talking was all well and good, but Jon wasn’t really sure what Sasha wanted him to say. He’d had trouble with feelings when he was alive, let alone now.  “ Did Martin ever tell you about the first time he summoned me?”  he asked.

Sasha shook her head. “Not really. He said he’d found you in the book, and you’d agreed to stick around.”

“So you understand what he was doing with the book. Summoning everyone, helping them close up any unfinished business,  and offer them the chance to be burned, if they wanted. Most… most people choose to go. When death’s already happened to you, it’s… well, it’s kind of hard to explain. But a lot was going on, and he lays out this option to me and tells me that, for the record, he doesn’t want me to go. I know he’ll do it, if I ask him to, but he seems to think I can… help, I guess. He seems to think I might have advice, on being the Archivist. He asks me if I want to go, and I tell him I’m not sure. There was a lot to adjust to.” Jon sighed. “But that was a lie.”

“Oh. Jon, I’m so sorry. If we’re guilting you into – ”

“No, no; that’s the thing. I’m glad I made that decision, now. When I was alive, I didn’t… well, it’s like you said. You didn’t know me, and I didn’t really know any of you, either. I thought I knew you and Tim, at least a bit, but I never even tried with Martin. And then there was Mary, and Basira, and Melanie, and I never really knew any of them, either. And it wasn’t as if nobody… I mean, Tim was trying to get me to go out for drinks with you all the time, but I always felt like I’d be imposing, and it wouldn’t be really pleasant anyway, especially when I felt I had to… well.”

“Had to what?”

“I was a bit unfair to everyone, I think. Not just with the… spell of paranoia. Martin particularly; he was clumsy, but not bad. I was… I was a bit afraid, with taking the archivist job, that I mightn’t be up to it. I felt very much out of my depth. Nobody seemed to notice that I was… covering a bit, blaming Gertrude, and then Martin – ”

“No, we noticed. Absolutely everyone noticed. Except maybe Martin, I think he’s too nice to realise things like that. And he had that massive crush on you, so – ”

“He  _ what _ ?”

Sasha stared. “Did… did you not know? Oh. Um, shit. Don’t tell him I said anything?”

“He… I’m sure you’re misreading the situation. Nobody’s interested in me at the best of times, and I was never particularly… nice to him.”

“You were a total dick.”

“Well, yes.  The point is. Being alive, I was too busy doing all of the things that living people do. Trying to protect my reputation, ignore all the little insecurities, eat and sleep regularly – ”

“You didn’t eat or sleep regularly.”

“ – that I never really got to know anyone, and since then I… well, now all I have is time with you. And I can see how great you are, from… outside.”

“You’re not outside.”

“Why is it so hard for you to understand that I am literally an eldritch artefact cursed with the memories of a dead man?”

“And Mary’s an inhuman monster aping humanity,  and  the rest of us are all variously turning into different fear-eating beings of power except maybe Basira, and honestly the fact that she seems unscathed makes me  _ far more _ worried.  You’re here, we’re here, none of us are what we were, and trying to distance yourself from us with the little detail that you happen to be dead would be a lot more effective if you hadn’t been trying to do the same thing with everything else about you when you were alive. So, big question – when we save Martin, do you want to still exist?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. At first I didn’t, but now… after everything…” he shrugged. “But if you do have to choose – ”

“Then we should choose the living; you’ve already said. And if it comes down to it, I will. But I’m not going to sacrifice you needlessly, either, just so you know.  You do have value. When you were alive, and now.”

_ Agree to disagree,  _ Jon thought. But he didn’t say anything. No point in starting a silly argument. 

Instead, he cleared his throat. “So, um. Martin. You said he used to have… feelings for me?”

“Pretend I didn’t say anything. I shouldn’t have said anything. I assumed even your oblivious arse had figured that out already.”

“I just, I wanted to know if that’s strictly a past tense thing, or – ”

“ This is something between you and Martin, don’t bring me into it. And don’t tell him I told you.”

“It’s just that, well, I’ve gotten to know him better recently, and I just want to know exactly what – ”

“You know what, I’ve got a lot of very important research to do on Mary Keay, and you should have a rest.”

“Because if he does still – ”

But Sasha was already dismissing him.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Tim reread the text, then glanced at Basira to confirm that she, too, had received the same text, and he wasn’t hallucinating the whole messy scenario. Judging by her expression, she had.

“So,” Basira said.

“So Mary Keay, huh,” Tim replied.

“So… Pinhole Books, then.  I’ll call Daisy. ”

“ We should bring Mary, too. She seems to be immune to a lot of weird stuff.  Should we get – ?”

“I’m sure Trevor and Julia have other stuff to do. We can handle this.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “You don’t like them.”

“I like them fine. I don’t trust them. And neither would you, if you had any sense.”

“They saved my life twice.”

“If you go around trusting everyone who saves your life, you’re gonna get screwed over by a lot of people.  I mean, you’re in danger a lot.”

“At least a quarter of that danger is because of things you hire me to do. Like investigate the old premises of undead book collectors.”

“Oh, shut up and grab an easily-concealable weapon. Let’s get this over with.”

\---------------------------

  
  


“ So that’s why I think we should all live together,” Mary explained as she trailed after Basira, Tim and Daisy.

Basira and Daisy both looked expectantly at Tim, but he just grimaced and shook his head. “I can’t do the suggestive jokes when she says stuff, it’s weird. She’s like a little kid.”

“I’m an adult woman,” Mary protested, indicating her adult-woman-shaped body.

“You’re like, four years old.”

“An apartment building,” Daisy said.

“Huh?”

“Mary’s idea has… merit. Given how many things  seem to be trying to kill or kidnap us all the time, everyone staying in close proximity is probably a good idea. But to be perfectly honest, Tim, the time you slept on our couch I wanted to kill you. I’m not living in a house with those weirdos.”

“I think us being us all together just makes us easier to take out all at once,” Tim said. “A building is easy to set on fire. But… Mary, when we’re done here, I want to show you something.”

“Okay.”

Pinhole Books, predictably, no longer existed. The cramped space was instead taken over by something called Othersyde Gallery, which might’ve been an art gallery or an alternative clothing store; Tim couldn’t tell on first glance.

He followed Daisy in, leaving Basira and Mary outside for the moment. It probably was an alternative clothing store, judging by the racks of cheap black garments interspersed with random splashes of neon, but the walls were also covered in art; hug canvasses of people and cities with eye-watering 3D effects that made Tim wonder if they’d walked into one of those endless horror mazes that showed up in some of the Institute statements.

The teenager behind the counter took a long drag on her cigarette (Tim was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to smoke in shops) and eyed them both, unimpressed. Daisy spared her only a cursory glance before doing a quick circuit of the tiny store.

“ Nothing has been here for a long time,” she announced. Tim relaxed and gestured to Basira and Mary,  who came in.  Mary inspected a complicated-looking lace blouse with a baffled look on her face while Basira went to the cashier.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. Looking for anything in particular?”

“Actually, I was  hoping to ask you some questions. My name’s Basira Hussain; I’m a private investigator.” She handed over her card. “I’m looking for an old bald woman covered in tattoos that look like ancient writing. Have you seen anyone like that?”

“Oh, yeah! She came in yesterday. Said she used to own this place.”

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to know if we had any of her old stuff, from when we opened. We threw out most of the junk we found in here, or donated it, or whatever, so I couldn’t help her.”

“Was she after anything in particular?”

“Uh, yeah. She wanted to know what we’d done with her books? I mean, it used to be a bookshop. But there was only old junk books here when we got here, and not very many of them. Dad said he gave them away to charity shops, I think? That’s what I told her, anyway. But she kept badgering me about this one book, and I don’t know. Books are books.” She shrugged.

“Do you remember what the book was called?”

“Something about anatomy? It sounded like a textbook, I think.”

Basira’s focus immediately sharpened. “Was it ‘An Introduction to Higher Anatomy’?”

“That’s it!”

Basira and Daisy exchanged a look.

“Let’s go,” Daisy said.

Basira pushed her card across the desk. “Call me if she comes back, okay? But don’t tell her I was here, and be very, very careful. That woman is dangerous.”

“Yeah, I’m shitting myself over an old lady.”

Basira couldn’t respond to that, because Daisy was dragging her out the door. Tim and Mary hurried to keep up.

“So this book,” Tim began. “What does it – ?”

“You don’t want to know,” Daisy said.

“Huh. That bad?”

“Hm.”

“Where is it, then?”

“Last I saw, police evidence, several years ago. But, well.” Daisy shrugged.

“Well…?”

Basira looked uncomfortable. “The police aren’t really equipped to handle… odd artefacts. The culture is, we, they, don’t really talk about… well. Thinks like that usually go missing after awhile and nobody really questions it, if it was something weird. Nobody wants to get a Section 31, and those that have signed them don’t want to know.”

“Oh!” Mary said brightly. “That’s why nobody looked very hard after I stole all those Gertrude tapes!”

“ Hey, I questioned Jon about those,” Basira protested. “I did my due diligence.”

“Point is,” Daisy said, “that book might still be in lockup. But I doubt it.”

“What does Mary need it for, though?” Tim wondered. “It doesn’t sound like an End book.”

“I very much doubt it is,” Basira said.

“Then what do you think it – ?”

“Flesh. A, um, a lot of Flesh.”

“ Oh,” Mary said. “That makes sense.”

“It does?” Tim asked.

“Yeah! We think she’s trying to be immortal, right? Using the book? Probably retrying her failed ritual, right? But that ritual needs a lot of something she doesn’t have right now!” Mary smiled brightly. “Real, living human skin! ”

“ Well,” Basira said after a slight pause. “That’s a disturbing thought.”

“Sorry.” Mary put on a more somber face and said grimly, “Real, living human skin.”

“Good try, Mary. Good try.”


	109. Chapter 109

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha investigates Mary Keay. Mary Sue tries to turn this story into a domestic au.
> 
> The author hits over 200k words of this "short, silly crack fic", started less than two months ago, because something is deeply wrong with me.

Mary Keay (deceased). Married to Eric Delano (deceased), mother of Gerard Keay (deceased); no siblings, parents also deceased. The name Eric Delano sounded vaguely familiar, so Sasha poked around until she found it – he’d been an archival assistant at the Magnus Institute. Some further poking revealed that Mary’s mother had worked for them too, in artefact storage.

Hmm.

Mary had no record of ever working for the Institute, but she’d given at least one statement to Gertrude, luckily enough about the skin book. From the tone of the statement, it seemed to be the first one she’d given, and she didn’t seem to have any intention of coming back, but Sasha held out hope that there might be more information somewhere in the mountain of as-yet-undigitised written statements and tapes.

Sasha made a mental note to check with artefact storage to see if the ghost page Mary given Gertrude was in their possession, but she doubted it. Gertrude had seemed pretty keen to burn it. On the other hand, Sasha had witnessed how difficult it could be for Jon, or Martin, or Elias or, distressingly, Sasha herself, to destroy information. Gertrude had been very disciplined, but she’d been the Archivist for fifty years. There was a chance that the page was simply tucked away somewhere.

N othing else in the statement was exceptionally useful, except maybe for Mary’s worryingly casual attitude to murder from such a young age. But they already knew she was dangerous.  Rather more interesting was Basira’s text, which had Sasha go down to artefact storage.

Even after years, it was strange to go down there and recognise basically no one. Artefact storage had always had a high employee turnover rate, sometimes due to unfortunate accidents but mostly due to people witnessing or anticipating unfortunate accidents and transferring out as quickly as possible. She tried not to be too weirded out by seeing only strangers in what had once been her workspace in the offices on the other side of the security desk.

“Hi,” Sasha said, smiling at the tired-looking man behind the desk and pulling out her employee ID. “I need to know if we have a specific Leitner in storage.”

“Leitners require extra security to – ”

“I don’t need to check it out. I don’t want it. I just want to know if it’s here. Can you look it up for me? I’m doing follow-up for an old statement and it’s kind of important.”

“Right, right. You got a name for the book?”

“An Introduction to Higher Anatomy.”

He typed away at the computer. “According to our database, it was purchased and put in storage in April, two thousand and sixteen.”

“Is it still there?”

“What?”

“Look, I know how… mobile… some Leitners can be. I just want to make sure it’s definitely in our possession right now.”

The man looked at her suspiciously. “Why would that matter for a statement follow-up?”

“It’s complicated. Could you please just run my clearance and have someone go check?”

He sighed, scanned her ID, and made a note of it. “Someone will email you by the end of tomorrow to confirm it’s there.”

“The end of tomorrow? There’s no way to speed that up?”

“Miss James, we are engaged in very dangerous research involving some very dangerous artefacts. Much of what we do here is urgent and time sensitive. While I’m sure the archives are in very good hands, a two-hour safety equipping and decontamination procedure to check that a book is on a shelf just so that you can put the right stamp on a file and put it in the right box  today instead of tomorrow is not at the top of our priority list. It’s on the schedule, and end of tomorrow is the best I can do.”

Pushing further wouldn’t help. Sasha tried to prevent her smile from going to glassy as she said, “I understand. Thank you,” and stalked back out into the hall.

Nothing to do but wait, then. Sasha didn’t even consider the option of checking for herself. Breaking into security tape storage was one thing, but there was no way she was going to go blindly poke around a room full of Leitners. Sounded like a great way to become a very colourful cautionary tale. Mostly red.

\-----------------------

  
  


Mary followed Tim through the underground tunnels. They moved through the dark, Tim apparently used enough to the path to not need light.

“They’re easy to navigate so long as you stay to the very outside of the pattern,” he explained, “and pay attention in case something changes. I tool a wrong turn once and ended up too deep and took a whole day to find my way back. Ah, here we are.” He pulled out his phone and illuminated a crumbing brick wall. Plasterboard was clearly visible through gaps in the brickwork. “On the other side of that,” Tim explained, “is a basement. The basement to an apartment building.”

“Ah! If we move in there, we have an escape tunnel if anything goes wrong.”

“Yeah. Of course, we’ll have to be careful anyway; we don’t want the innocents in the building to get hurt by anyone who comes after us. But if we have to get out, we’d have a way. There’s also a pretty clear path from here to the Institute, so if you guys need to get to work without being watched…”

“Tim, this is perfect!”

“’Course it is. I’m a genius. The issue will be finding ground floor flats available to rent.”

“Leave that to me,” Mary said.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Sasha stared dumbly at the email.

“It’s not… good news, then?” Jon ventured.

She gestured at the screen. He peeked over her shoulder. It wasn’t good news – An Introduction to Higher Anatomy wasn’t in storage.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Sasha said dully. “We have no leads. She could be anywhere in London, Martin is almost definitely dying, and we have no leads.”

No. They’d come too far to have nothing but dead ends. “There must be something we haven’t considered,” Jon said.

“Like what? If you have any ideas of anything we haven’t considered, I’d love to hear it. Undead ghost women don’t carry mobile phones, apparently! And I haven’t found her on any CCTV in the city, which isn’t surprising because I don’t have an image of her and there’s only so much even supernatural software can do with looking for Sanskrit text written on someone! Do you have any idea how many random objects look like Sankrit letters to a computer? Ugh, this would be so much easier if Martin were conscious. He could get what we needed out of whoever we needed.”

“Without having anyone to ask, I doubt that would help much,” Jon pointed out. “But if he were conscious, he could probably just tell us where the book is. I always know where I am, in relation to my projection.”

“Of course the most useful person is the one we can’t communicate with.”

“Do you think he’s… okay, in there? I mean, Mary said he wasn’t feeling any fear, but…”

“But there’s a lot of other things someone can feel. Yeah.” Sasha rubbed her eyes. “Not much we can do about it, right?”

Jon shook his head. He’d stuck around because Martin had needed him. He’d gotten to know him and everyone else so much better in the meantime, gotten a taste of what he’d missed out on when he was alive, shutting himself away. These people were worth protecting.

He wasn’t going to fail Martin now.

“There must be something we haven’t considered,” he insisted. “Basira will think of something. Basira always seems to think of something.”

\-----------------

  
  


Basira had nothing.

There were simply _no leads_. Nothing to work with! She kept going over the same information, but everything was a dead end. What were they supposed to do, search all of London on foot? She supposed they could wait for the inevitable police response to the mess that Higher Anatomy would cause and simply follow the officers, but Mary Keay would probably be long gone by then.

There were always leads. There was always information. There was always somewhere to go. But not this time.

“What happens if we fail?” Daisy asked.

“New Archivist,” Basira said. “Sasha, probably. It was between her and Martin last time and, ha, we chose him because we wanted the best arrangement of assistants to be able to rescue him. Fat lot of good that did.”

“There’s got to be something we missed,” Daisy growled.

Basira eyed her. Daisy had never been overly close to Martin, and while Basira was sure she’d save him if she could, she knew that that wasn’t what this passion was about. Daisy didn’t like her ‘prey’ getting away.

Basira had relied on Daisy’s clarity and drive for years, as police and as a PI. Only at the very end of her police career had she started to get… concerned, seeing how heavily the job weighed on her, worried bout what it was doing to her. But in the years since, with a broader perspective, she was starting to think that the job hadn’t been the problem. At least, not the whole problem.

Basira watched Daisy’s frustrated pacing. If they couldn’t find the book in time, where would all that restless energy go?

\-----------------------------

  
  


“There _has_ to be something we can _do_ ,” Tim muttered as he checked his text messages. Sasha: no leads. Basira and Daisy: no leads. Mary: no leads.

At least cultists left clear trails. They moved about, they had homes, they congregated and planned. How were they supposed to hunt down a magic ghost woman?

He couldn’t find her, he wasn’t strong enough, he wasn’t good enough, and because of that, Martin was going to die.

Tim was struck with a sudden memory from his early days as an archive assistant, back before things went wrong. Well, back before they’d realised anything was wrong. It had really been wrong right from the start, he supposed. Him, and Sasha, and Martin all sharing that archive space, with Jon grumpily pretending to work hard on the other side of the office door. Martin had seemed so much more vulnerable then, a worrywart who’d blush and stammer at the slightest hint that he might’ve upset someone, always falling over himself to try to make everyone happy. And now he was the one who needed help, and Tim couldn’t provide it.

“Sorry, Martin,” he mumbled, as he texted everyone back to tell them he didn’t have anything to go on, either.

\---------------------

  
  


As he sat on top of the Tower, Martin found that he couldn’t bring himself to hate Mary Keay.

If he was still in there, alive, building, he probably would. But such limited perspectives were the privilege of the builders. Out here… well, one could hardly blame the builders for being what they were. If you gave someone a book and cursed them with curiosity, but withheld the knowledge of the danger within, could you blame them for reading it and destroying their mind? If you showed someone a forbidden fruit tree, cursed them with trust and withheld the knowledge of good and evil, could you blame them from partaking and corrupting their soul? If you cursed someone with the nature to build and didn’t gift them with enough foresight to understand the scope of what they were making until it was too late, could you blame them when their Tower collapsed and crushed their bodies?

Things would unfold how they would unfold, and the right to judge any part of the process belonged to the builders alone. Out here… out here there was only waiting, and the climbing roots, and the slow weakening of Martin’s spirit.

So he waited.


	110. Chapter 110

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon is blessed with further Emotions. Georgie is pissed off at being ignored.

Technically, hospital patients weren’t supposed to have more than three visitors at a time. But nobody had stopped the three archive assistants, Tim and Daisy from striding through the hospital and straight into Martin’s room. Once they were inside, Mary firmly closed the door so that Sasha could summon Jon without panicking any passers-by.

They all stared at Martin for awhile.

“There’s got to be something we can do,” Tim said. “Some fucking thing.”

“Something we missed,” Basira agreed.

“What’s the point of serving the fear of observation and uncovered secrets if we can’t find any useful fucking secrets?” Sasha added.

Jon didn’t say anything. He looked down at the man sleeping peacefully before him. The man he’d hardly known in life, not because he hadn’t had the opportunity, but because he just hadn’t bothered, too busy with his own life, his own reputation, trying to be his own person as if there was even such a thing as a single person outside of their relationships to others. And then he’d died, and he’d thought it was too late. He’d learned more about Martin then, about all of them, but not as much as he could have, hiding behind the excuse of it being too late, him being already dead. And what Sasha had said about… well. Jon wasn’t great with feelings, but it would have been worth exploring. Martin was a good person, someone Jon had grown to admire; surprisingly smart, although Jon had found he didn’t care as much about that as he used to. More important, Martin had been shamelessly kind.

Jon thought about how much Martin had always done to hold the group together, to try to cheer up and comfort those who needed it. How he’d given himself knowingly, agreed to become the Archivist, just so that nobody else would have to do it. How he always had that little lilt in his voice when he was trying to figure out what someone needed, how he’d get unnervingly focused on specific problems, how he’d flex and rub his left hand when he was particularly unsettled and unsure of himself.

That hand lay still and relaxed, now, just like the rest of Martin, half-curled on the hospital blanket. Not caring how stupid he looked to everyone else in the room, Jon reached forward and slipped his own hand into the gap in Martin’s. They couldn’t touch, but if he got the position right, it looked like they were holding hands.

Jon felt…

A tug. A merging, of sorts. He’d never considered what it would be like to touch another ghost, and Martin wasn’t really a ghost, still being alive and all, but he supposed that some level of, of bleed was to be expected, in such cases –

“Jon, what is it?” Basira asked, looking at him sharply. “What’s wrong?”

“I can feel him,” Jon said. “I can feel where his page is.”

\-------------------------------

  
  


On the Tower, Martin leapt to his feet and spun around, trying to see who was there. He had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t entirely alone. But no matter how hard he looked, there was nothing in sight but the sky and the roots and the Tower.

\----------------------------

  
  


“What do you mean, you can feel where it is? Do you have an address? Or I guess not, but a relative location?”

“I have a direction, and I can tell you it’s a lot further away than I can project from my page. That’s as precise as I can give you.”

“It’s enough,” Daisy said. “If we can get him out of here, you can guide us to the right place.”

They all looked at Martin. At the door. At the window.

“So,” Tim said. “How easy do you reckon it would be to break a comatose guy out of hospital? It always looks easy on TV.”

“Not easy,” Daisy said. “A stolen lab coat and a sheet over a gurney won’t work. Unless…?” she looked at Mary.

“I could try?” Mary ventured. “But I don’t think it will work. There’s… there are too many other kinds of fear here, that mine would be misinterpreted as. I don’t know how to put it, but me having power here is really chancy.”

“Peter Lukas had no trouble vanishing someone from hospital,” Sasha grumbled.

“Yes but we don’t have an alternate dimension handy,” Jon said. “Although it might be worth asking for his help? I assume that Elias and Peter don’t want Martin to die in hospital.”

“Hard to know what they want,” Basira said bitterly. “Elias isn’t helpful, and it’s impossible to even meet with Peter. We can’t even get to Mel – ”

She stopped talking. They all stared at each other.

“That would probably work, actually,” Jon said.

Mary nodded. “I’ll go talk to her.”

\----------------------

  
  


Georgie had had enough. Just because she ran a ghost podcast didn’t mean she liked to be ghosted.

Ew, that pun was terrible. She’d think of a better one when she wasn’t so angry.

Even finding Melanie’s office had been difficult enough. The woman at the front desk kept getting confused and distracted when she asked where it was, but eventually she was marching down a strangely silent hall, knocking on the door, being _ignored_ for almost _ten full minutes_ , then breaking the lock and pushing her way in.

Melanie sat at a computer, typing. “Come on, we just replaced that lo – ” She looked up, and went pale. “Georgie. Hi.”

“Hi? That’s what you’ve got to say to me? If you don’t want me around, you could’ve at least broken things off properly rather than just… fading away like this.”

“Georgie, that’s not…” Melanie took a deep breath. “No, you’re right. You should move on. I’m sorry.”

Georgie stared. “Are you fucking serious right now? After everything – ”

“After everything, you deserve better. It’s not your job to worry about me, and you shouldn’t have to wait around for someone who won’t talk to you.”

“You’re right,” Georgie said. “You’re absolutely right. Sometimes things come up, sometimes things don’t work out, but a halfway decent person would’ve given me an explanation.”

“Yes. They would have.”

“Okay, fine. Fine. Melanie, I – ”

She was interrupted by somebody opening the door. That creepy monster, Mary, peeked through the doorway. “Ah. I’m interrupting something.”

“I told you to leave me alone!” Georgie snapped.

“Yeah. You know how you asked if there was anything you specifically could do to save Martin, and I said no? I was wrong. We need your help to save his life.” It glanced at Georgie. “It’s Georgie, right? Would you mind helping out, too, since you’re here? I can carry him alone, but it’s nice to have backup.”

“Um. What?”

\------------------------

  
  


The hospital corridors were largely empty as Melanie, Georgie and Mary swept through them. Everyone without an important, urgent task found somewhere else they suddenly wanted to be; the bedridden patients and the staff attending to urgent tasks focused on what they were doing, ignoring the trio.

Mary was unpracticed at removing the various lines and monitors on Martin, but she knew exactly what she was doing. She’d studied as much medicine as she could to get the body right. The line in his arm was only saline, so it was simple enough to take it out without problems, though he might have a bit of a bruise later. They wrapped him in a sheet and, with Georgie helping to keep him steady, simply followed Melanie back out of the building.

It was _easy_.

Outside, Melanie tossed Sasha the keys to the Ghost Hunt UK van while Basira helped Mary get Martin into the back.  She’d finally had the damn logo painted over, but she’d made it very clear regardless that if the police came around asking her about criminal activity with the van she fully intended to tell them it had been stolen.

“Okay,” she said, “I have to get back to work. Have fun killing zombie grandma.”

“You’re not coming?” Basira asked.

“I don’t do the… knife thing, any more. So I can’t do anything here that you guys can’t do already. You don’t need me here. Goodbye.”

She headed back towards the Institute before anyone could protest. But Georgie, of course, rushed after her.

“So you’re just heading back into work, then?”

“They don’t need me for the rest. I noticed you’re not going with them.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me. But you do.”

“Why? Why won’t you just give up on me?”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes for me to give up on someone? Melanie, I… I don’t think whatever’s going on with you is good for you. When you came to me, you wanted to get better. You wanted to be in a better place, so you could get more out of your life, live how you wanted. But this… this isn’t a better place, and I don’t understand why you’re doing this to yourself!”

“That’s right. You don’t understand!”

“So explain it to me! If this is such reasonable behaviour, if you want me to back off, then explain the reason and maybe I will!”

So Melanie did. Keeping in mind that Elias might we watching, and choosing her words accordingly, she explained about Peter, and the Extinction, and the vague outline she knew of Peter’s plan.

Georgie stared.

“Melanie King, are you trying to save the world?”

“Ha. I… suppose so, yes. I mean, I think so? We already did once, with the Unknowing, and we don’t know how bad this will be – ” she was cut off by Georgie’s lips on hers. Melanie was surprised by the warmth of her and realised, with a little shock, that he hadn’t had physical contact with another person for a couple of weeks. She’d forgotten that people were warm.

“Will you come back to me? When you’re done?”

“I don’t… I don’t think I can. I don’t…”

“Well, I ope you’re wrong about that. I expect you probably are.”

“You shouldn’t wait for me, Georgie.”

“Melanie, have I ever waited for anyone, for anything?”

“ Ha, guess not.”

“Well then. Have fun at work.”

“You know my job. Always a fucking joy.” Melanie walked away, and the world was cold again. T he hospital was far enough from the Institute to only be within walking distance if you were very determined, but Melanie wasn’t going to brave the crowd of the Underground and she’d just generously loaned her van to The Cause, so walking it was. She probably needed more exercise anyway.

P eter was waiting for her when she got back. “Ah, Melanie. You went out?”

She considered brushing him off, but he’d probably just ask Elias anyway. “The Archivist is in trouble. They needed my help.”

“It seems he always is, isn’t he? So you went to help them?”

She shrugged. “I told you, if I can save people, I will.”

“Because you want to be a good person. Your choice, I suppose. And a fortunate trait, since you’re needed to save the world, which is what I came to talk about.”

“You’ve decided to be less mysterious about this ‘device’?”

“I’m not trying to be mysterious, I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I’m just not very good at explaining things. In fact, I believe I’ll have located the device and have everything in place within the month, so if there’s anything in your life that you’d still like to resolve, I’d recommend that you do it in that time.”

Suspicious wording. “Is this going to be fatal?”

“Oh, no! Well, I won’t pretend that there is no danger, but we both have an extremely good chance of getting through this alive.”

“ Oh. Goody.”


	111. Chapter 111

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team: Rescue Martin stalks their prey

The van was pretty crowded. Tim had no idea how Melanie had ever fit a ghost hunting crew in it with a whole bunch of camera equipment; even just the people were a lot.

Sasha drove, with Daisy in the passenger seat, eye out for threats. In the back, Mary supported Martin, cushioning him from the vibrating floor with her body while keeping his airway straight; Jon crouched next to her, one hand on (and sometimes, disconcertingly, inside) Martin’s shoulder as he occasionally gave updated directions to Sasha. Mary kept her wary eyes on Julia and Trevor, who were at the other end of the van near the big back doors, looking about as relaxed as one would expect about being in a confined space with a fake human, a mysterious-if-comatose truthseeing nightmare man, and a ghost. Tim and Basira formed a buffer between the two groups, desperately pretending not to notice the tension in the air.

They ended up outside a retirement village. Everyone readied to leap into action, until Sasha told them to sit the hell down, pinpointed the specific little flat they needed, drove three blocks away and had everyone conceal their weapons and approach the place from different directions in pairs. “Prisons are a thing,” she reminded them, “and I’d rather not end up in one.”

“ Actually, situation like this, there’s a chance they’d kill us all to clean it up instead,” Daisy said. “Especially if they find our connections to other incidents.”

“A very calming thought, Daisy, thank you for that,” Tim said as they all got out, leaving Martin and the ghost of Jon alone in the former Ghost Hunt UK van. There was probably a joke in there somewhere, but Tim was too keyed up to find it.

“ You guys need to be more subtle,” Julia grumbled,  shouldering a backpack full of who-knew-what and checking that her gun was loaded . “We never attract any police attention.”

“When I met you you were literally firing a shotgun on a public street in London,” Tim pointed out.

“Yeah, at night time! Anyway, I know how to conceal a shotgun.”

_ Exactly the sort of skill anyone looks for in a partner _ , Tim thought, and tried not to get distracted from the mission by trying to figure out how someone as lean as Julia would conceal something as bulky as a shotgun.  Where did everyone around him even get their guns? He was pretty sure none of them were members of gun clubs or hunting associations. Where were they buying them?

B asira holstered her own gun and climbed out of the van. Right; the mission.

Tim and Sasha circled around the back of the flats. Tim could smell the nervousness coming off Sasha. Right; when was the last time she’d been in the middle of the action like this? When she’d saved him from the worms? Man, that was forever ago.

There was a gap between the curtains of a room around the back. Bedroom?  Tim pulled out a pair of travel binoculars and tried to get a look. Kitchen, it looked like. Movement, though; someone was moving around in there.

Tim wished that he was one of their team members who could use a gun. He didn’t think a bullet could stop Mary Keay, but it might… dissipate her, or whatever, or disable her somehow so they could find the book.

He and Sasha inched closer.

\---------------------

  
  


Julia and Trevor headed for the front of the house.  Julia knew a little of Mary Keay from Gerard’s occasional whining, but truth be told, she didn’t know much of what to expect from ‘ghost gone rogue’. She still thought that killing the comatose guy would solve the problem – he was obviously some kind of monster, from the way the others talked about him – but they’d be able to take out more monsters if they cooperated with the plan. And get their book back.

She checked her pockets, just to make sure that she’d brought a lighter. Trevor always had a lighter on him, having grown up fighting vampires, but there was a chance they’d get separated, and she wanted to be properly equipped if they were. The pair exchanged a glance, and advanced.

\----------------

  
  


Mary approached the left side of the house. She’d elected to go alone rather than with Tim an d Sasha, as her own abilities were more flexible if she didn’t have to contend with a human right next to her, having an impression of who she was. Besides, four groups meant that they could approach from all four directions. There was fear inside the house. Generally, Mary wasn’t great at estimating the number of sources of fear, but in this case they were so distinct from each other that it was easy; from one, the gentle hum of alertness and anticipation, but no immediate terror. From another, a true fear of the Stranger, of an unknown entity that could not be understood and meant the person harm. So, at least two people inside, one, terrified, presumably of Mary Keay. She had at least one victim or hostage in there, for… whatever she was doing.

Mary glanced left to see Tim and Sasha approaching, right to see  Julia and Trevor. They had the element of surprise, and they had the building surrounded. Get in, get the book, save the hostage(s), save Martin.

They could do this.

\-----------------------

  
  


Daisy and Basira approached the  right side of the house. Daisy could hear their prey moving around in there, talking (to herself?) in a long, rambling stream. She and Basira didn’t need to talk; they knew their roles, they’d done this a hundred times. 

There was a low line of shrubs leading almost directly from their position under a tiny window. Basira stood back  to maintain line of sight with Tim out the back and Julia out the front , while Daisy crouched low and advanced.

The little window was open, and Daisy could smell blood. From inside, she could make out the words being spoken.

“Don’t worry, dear; it won’t hurt for long. You’re quite lucky, actually. With this I really should be taking all of your organs, one by one, but I have quite a lot of experience with these books, you see, and I’ll do my best to resist the compulsion and not make you have to suffer the whole process. I really only need your skin, but it’s useless to me until it’s my skin. Do try to stay alive while I get all of it, won’t you? If you die on me I’ll have to get the rest from somebody else, and it really it rather messy.”

Daisy took out a tiny mirror and, being exceptionally careful about nearby light sources, angled it to try to get a better look inside the room. All she could see was a bit of kitchen bench, with several objects blocking her view. A small leather bag, still covered in dried mud;  An  Introduction to Higher Anatomy;  an ancient iron bell, about the size of a fist, corroded almost beyond recognition; a small, silver knife; the book of ghosts. Daisy weighed her chances of being able to snatch it through the window… no. Too risky.

She could hear the target approach, and lowered the mirror. She heard two objects being taken from the bench – from the sounds, Higher  A natomy and the knife, at a guess – and then the target moved away again.

Whoever Mary had been talking to hadn’t responded, even through a gag, meaning they were probably seriously incapacitated,  and obviously in immediate danger. She nodded at Basira,  who signalled to Tim and Trevor. Tim would signal to Mary.

M ary Keay was still walking away, so she was facing away… fixing the location of the ghost book firmly in her mind, Daisy reached through the window and… 

And her hand burned in pain as it passed over the sill. She pulled back, but Mary Keay had spun around, seen her, and smiled. The little bell on the bench began to rock and ring, and despite being half rusted away, the sound was clear and loud and echoed through Daisy’s skull…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short one this time since this was the only place to break between chapters. Next chapter is extra long to make up for it, don't worry. :P


	112. Chapter 112

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one has a good time.

The sound of a bell echoed through Tim’s skull  and rippled through his body, through his skin, making him feel that everything was on fire. He tried to concentrate on the window he was supposed to be climbing through, but everything seemed to be moving without moving, exploding outward with a bright flash and yet staying in the same place, like the world spinning around a child who’s just made himself dizzy. The light on every object flickered like fire and he couldn’t seem to judge exactly where the windowsill was in order to grab it; he made a grab as it flew past, except that it wasn’t flying past. He fell.

\------------------------

  
  


The sound of a bell echoed through Sasha’s skull, pulling her into herself and stinging her eyes. She looked around and saw matter, uninteresting physical atter. Some of it made up the shape of Tim falling. She tried to help him up, but he didn’t seem to realise that she was there. She drew her knife and leapt through the window herself, trailing glass. Deep cuts opened on her body as she passed over the sill, but it didn’t matter; it was just a body.

A body that was all she was, because she couldn’t see the real world here, a world of virtual lives and changeable masks. The sound of the bell held her inside her own head, so that she could almost forget the electronic signals where she’d outsourced most of herself, her skills, her personality, a safe world where things could be hidden or changed or shed at will, where she knew how to hide her secrets and few other people did. The sound held her inside her skin, where she was blind, her senses limited to a crude arrangement of receptors on her face and body, her personage imprisoned within a skin and so easily seen, known, analysed. She dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor, dropped the knife, and began clawing at her arms with her fingernails, desperate to free herself from the body.

\---------------------------

  
  


The sound of a bell echoed through Daisy’s skull and set her teeth on edge. The smell of fear was everywhere, the smell of blood was everywhere, and that meant that the smell of prey was everywhere. So many parts of this world needed cleaning up and she could do it, she could, it was what she was good at… except that she couldn’t locate anything because the prey was everywhere.

The smell of blood was strongest straight ahead. There was a barrier between her and the prey, but a hole in it; she leapt forward through it, and got stuck. A trap, a trap, a trap – she was caught! They were going to come for her now, kill her, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. Was the blood hers? Was the fear hers?  Had there ever been any other prey, but her?

The scar on her back burned where rough wood squeezed at her.  S he remembered Calvin’s eyes on her as he charged her. She’d fallen and… and other stuff had happened, since then. She’d done a lot of running, and fighting. Was she the pursuer, or the pursued? Had she been attacking, or defending?

Was all of this blood hers?

\------------------------

  
  


The sound of a bell echoed through Basira’s skull and into her mind.  So much was going on. There were so many variables to consider, so much to plan. Basira hated planning. Anything more than two or three steps introduced too many points of failure, so she always tried not to think much further ahead than that; there would be time to plan the next step when she reached it. But now, she couldn’t think. She looked around and saw avenues of escape, avenues of approach. Daisy leaping for a too-small window; what to do about it? She couldn’t help her from this side, but finding another entrance to the house would take so many steps. So many ways to go; which was the best? Which was the right choice? Which was optimal? 

Why couldn’t she figure this out?

\---------------------

  
  


The sound of a bell echoed through  Julia’s mind and settled into her bones. She drew her gun and kicked the front door in, trying to ignore the sound, but something with her vision was… odd. The world was in high contrast, everything washed out with overly bright light of cast deep in dark, dark shadows that she knew far too well, the echoes of the ringing seeming to disappear into them. In the narrow front hallway, she was surrounded by potential entry points for monsters.

Julia expected to die to a monster someday, but it would not be one of those things from the darkness. The darkness had uprooted her life far too many times already; it would no claim her death. With a roar of panic, Julia spun to face the nearest shadow and started to empty her gun into it.

\---------------------

  
  


The sound of a bell echoed through Trevor’s skull and rippled through his veins. It had been years since he’d been in a position to support a stable heroin habit, although he still partook when he could, and he felt its absence now. Not because of withdrawal, but because of the echo of vulnerability its absence made him feel. He knew, logically, that he could hold his own against any vampire; he knew, logically, that given how many other monsters were out there, he was technically more vulnerable when high than when he wasn’t, but the lack of a shield grated at him and what grated at him more was that he knew it was just an excuse. As if he didn’t have enough addictions in his blood to worry about. His addiction to the hunt was the more dangerous one, even if he was I no position to stop (would the cancer return if he did?). It lead him about by the nose, from monster to monster as he chased the ultimate high of the taste of blood and the rush of power.

Trevor saw nothing but the chain of habit and temptation dragging him through the front door and into the hunt once more. Anything else that had once made up the world had been cut away long ago. He snarled and charged straight inside, immediately slamming headfirst into a wall.

\-------------------------

  
  


The sound of a bell echoed through Mary’s skull, and she was awash in fear. None of it was for her; even the kinds that she would normally take were turned inward, fear feeding off itself. Her world was barren, and sharply physical in a way that she normally only experienced when she was away from people, and she was never away from people for long.

This place was not for her, and if she started walking, she would leave it. Go where she was meant to be, find a victim, wear a cold stare and long fingers and sharp teeth in a well-meaning smile. That was where she –

That wasn’t where Mary belonged. She was Mary, Mary, Mary, and what was wrong here wasn’t wrong with her, it was wrong with her friends. She was here to help. If she walked, she knew, it would be away, but… but she had to find a way around that. She’d gone deeper into humanity than she was supposed to. Hung around longer than she was supposed to. Moulded a mask into her own being, and the people that had helped her do that now needed her help in return. These people barely feared her at the best of times, but she had marked them in another way. They were her friends. _They were for her_.

Mary walked forward like she was wading through mollasses. She turned off the path, walked the wrong way, dragged herself through every rough patch around every rough turn and walked toward the house.

She could save everyone, if she could get in there and get the book.

\-------------------------

  
  


Tim closed his eyes against the light and braced himself against the heat. The past was past, the fire was over. He had blown up the circus and collapsed a building that had killed Jon, but it had been the right call, the call that Jon himself had directed him to make with his Archivist powers; there had been a cost, but he was not ashamed. He’d run off and let everyone think he was dead while the fire burned in his heart, hurting his friends, and that had been wrong, but self-recrimination fixed nothing, future actions did. So he was not ashamed. He had betrayed people who had helped and trusted him, in the cult, and he had done so deliberately and to save multiple future innocent lives, and he was not ashamed.

The fires were all in the past, and he didn’t fear them. The light in his eyes and the burning in his skin was a lie. He could remember where the windowsill was without needing to see it. He could remember where he needed to be. He reached out to grip it, and pulled himself into the house.

A book. Amid the bright light and movement, there would be a book.

\---------------------------

  
  


Sasha’s skin stung with the lacerations of window glass and her own fingernails as she tried to get a grip on herself. She was small and weak and essentially blind and alone, her mind contained entirely in a frail body… as had been the state of humanity for the entirety of the past. And they had managed. Sasha had dealt with limited hardware before, with limited software before, with sleeping in cars and scraping meals from nothing and thinking on her feet. She’d sweet-talked her way into and out of impossible situations, solved complicated puzzles with no resources, jury-rigged useful machines out of the corpses of useless ones… and she was going to let this detroy her? Sometimes you had limited resources, and you muddled through. Humans had been confined to a physical world, with the backup of a cultural one, for almost all of their history. Was she scared of being a human?

Sasha pulled her bloody nails from her arms, struggled to her feet, and Dealt With It.

She was supposed to be looking for a book.

\----------------------

  
  


Basira could see Daisy. Daisy was in trouble.

Hesitation _was_ a misstep. Standing back, drowning in options, didn’t help Daisy. Some of the options ahead of her would help Daisy. Therefore, action was the best option. Move forward as best you can and hope for the best. Accept that failure is an option, and make the best choices you can anyway.

Basira walked forward, step by step. She made two dozen choices to make it to Daisy. Daisy was stuck in the narrow window; it had been open when she’d tried to leap through it, and now the aluminium window fram had twisted free of the wooden sill and was digging into her. A sharp piece of aluminium dug into her back, drawing blood; Masira carefully mapped out the series of steps it would take to move Daisy’s tangled shirt out of the way, withdraw the metal, pull her backwards. The wound wasn’t deep; Daisy had been protected by the thick, tough skin of a large starburst scar on her back. Basira carefully planned on how best to pull her free.

And after that, although she didn’t need to think that far ahead yet, on the other side of the window there was a book.

\----------------------

  
  


There was blood everywhere. There was chaos everywhere. Everything looked and smelled like a predator, like prey, and nothing could be pinned down long enough for Daisy to know how to respond.

Hands were on her, grabbing at her, pulling her back. Friend or foe? What was going on? Who to attack, how to attack, where to attack… what were her options? Anything she did could be a fatal mistake.

So do nothing.

That, too, could be a fatal mistake. But if she didn’t know what the bigger risk was, if her information made every risk equal, then she could choose to make those mistakes in ways that endangered others, or not.

Daisy could afford to do nothing, because Daisy had backup. Daisy always had backup.

Gentle hands pulled her from the window frame and hugged her tight as the bell rang on.

Basira always new what was going on. Together, they could push through and get the book.

\---------------------------

  
  


Julia emptied her gun into the wall, then drew a knife instead. She’d taken down plenty of cultists with a knife, but she knew it wouldn’t do much against the darkness itself. Except…

Except this wasn’t how the darkness worked, was it?

This was a distraction. A trick of the senses, making it hard to think. Julia had a job to do. And she had more than one sense to do it with.

She shut her eyes, banishing light and dark, and turned toward the kitchen. She was experienced enough with sound and smell that she wouldn’t need sight very much. Just the occasional peek to locate the prey… and the book.

\-------------------

  
  


Trevor reeled from the impact, and tried to blink the spots from his eyes. He’d lost his sense of direction, but that didn’t matter, because he was completely surrounded by monsters, monsters like him. And one monster was as good as another, so did it matter which he found? His vision cleared, and he drew his knife and prepared to leap as one of the monsters walked past.

Julia.

Right – that was why he did this, wasn’t it? Call it an addiction, call it a weakness, call him a monster – the words were immaterial. He acted to protect people. To stop them from falling prey to the things out there, by making those things out there fall prey to him. The current plan, allying with monsters, was convoluted, complicated… but clear.

His target was the book.


	113. Chapter 113

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author regrets giving a protagonist the same name as a villain and pitting them against each other.

Mary found the kitchen door and pushed her way inside.

The book sat on the kitchen bench, next to the ringing bell.

There was an old woman laid out on the floor, conscious but unmoving. Sasha and Tim stumbled forward, bleeding, trailing broken glass. They were tangled up in their own minds, seemingly not noticing Mary Keay, a bleeding book in one hand, reaching towards them with the other.

Mary leapt for her, tackling her to the ground. The undead woman reached into the Stranger’s chest, tangling her fingers in her lungs.

“What are you then, dear? Nothing I can use, I don’t think.”

If Mary could keep her distracted, she couldn’t hurt her friends. Eyes on the undead woman, she could feel the others moving. She knew that Mary Keay thought them helpless under the power of the bell, but they were moving. Sasha and Tim towards the bench. Trevor had entered, and was making for the paralysed woman. Mary smiled at Mary Keay, trying for intimidation, but the woman merely grinned in delight. “Are, a Stranger! You’ve done very good work in here, dearie,” she said, slipping fingers between Mary’s organs. “The last time I took one of you apart, there was nothing inside but sawdust.”

Mary wished she’d been less diligent about making sure she’d gotten the nerves right. She could barely notice anything over the pain. But she thought she should return the compliment. _Keep her distracted_.

“You’ve stayed surprisingly human,” she hissed through the pain, “for a ghost.”

Julia had come in.  She had moved towards the bench. Trevor was  moving back out of the room with the paralysed woman.

“Oh, I’m very much still alive, dear. Or I will be soon, at any rate. Just a couple of rituals… but I suppose that you wouldn’t understand such things, would you? Do you even really understand what living is? Or what a human is?”

Mary looked away, using the gesture to cover a quick glance at what was going on. Julia, raising something high over the bell in both hands. Sasha, flipping through the book; Tim, pulling out his lighter. If she could keep Mary Keay’s attention just a little longer…

“I don’t know about humans,” Mary admitted. “they’re complicated. But I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out what a person is.”

“Really, now.”

“A person,” Mary said, “is whatever it thinks it is.”

The fragile rusty bell shattered. Silence reigned. Mary Keay spun around to see what was happening, but Sasha, mind clear, was already tearing the newest page from the book; Mary Keay leapt for her, and she tossed it toward Tim, who dove to grab it as two guns were fired through the small window over the bench, bringing Mary Keay to her knees, preventing her from grabbing either the page or the book that Sasha tossed to Julia.

Julia pulled an ornate box from her bag as further gunfire kept Mary Keay down and slammed the book inside, just as Tim got the skin page to light. It erupted into flames, Mary Keay flickered ut of existence, and in the back of the Ghost Hunt UK van, Martin went rigid and screamed and screamed and screamed.

\--------------------------

  
  


Martin sat on the Tower and tried to ignore that vague feeling of not being alone. He knew it was wrong, there was nobody else, but he could almost feel a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Is that you?” he asked himself, but he didn’t reply. He’d stopped talking to himself some time ago. There was no more point in conversation than there was in exploring the Tower again; there was nothing new to be learned there. Once more, Martin resigned himself to simply waiting out the remainder of his limited eternity, while the roots grew closer.

And then he was on fire.

Martin screamed and closed his eyes against the sudden light that swamped his world. He rolled, trying to douse the flames, but he knew the Tower was light, too; everything was. Even the roots below burned, but he knew that if he jumped down to meet them, he wouldn’t; the pain would be over, this would be over. He struggled onto his knees, crawled towards the edge of the building… didn’t need his sight to know where everything was. The twisted roots below; the Tower in which to wait; the incomprehensible sky above. No, mu, yes. He could throw himself over, but… was someone trying to shake his shoulder? Was someone calling his name? Who could be calling his name?

Martin opened his eyes. He saw nothing but flames.

Martin opened his eye. His eye stretched across the sky and he looked down, down at the death and the tower and the poor, lost little builder stumbling about upon it, and at the point and pointlessness and horror and beauty of it all, he began to weep. His tears fell in a thick, salty rain, dousing the flames, soothing the skin of the builder, washing the tower clean, watering the dark roots. Without the fire, he could see. He could focus.

Martin opened his eyes. He saw Jon’s worried face above him “Martin! Martin, what’s – you’re awake! Oh, thank goodness – Martin, are you okay?”

“Define ‘okay’,” Martin groaned, sitting up. His brain seemed to rock in his skull as he did so. Was this what a migraine felt like? He’d have to look it up later.

“Be careful,” Jon fussed, trying to support him with a hand that phased right through his back. “You’ve been out for… for a while. You shouldn’t… we should get you back to hospital, actually.”

“I really don’t think that’ll help. What’s going on?”

“That’s, um… kind of a long story? It’s not really important right now, though. I genuinely thought we were going to lose you.  Martin, I… I don’t… no, this can wait. You should rest.”

“Where are we?”

“In Melanie’s van. Everyone’s out, um, fighting Mary Keay, I guess? I’m guessing they won, since you woke up, so I suppose we’ll know how things turned out in a few minutes. Until then – ”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Martin groaned, leaning back against the wall. “Rest.”

\--------------------

  
  


N obody knew how far the effect of the bell had reached  and just how many people would have called emergency services , but it didn’t seem wise to stick around. They called an ambulance for the old woman whom Trevor had pulled out of the battle zone and everyone (minus Trevor and Julia, who had already vanished) piled back into the  van and began the complicated logistical process of getting everyone who needed hospital attention to the ER separately, returning Melanie’s van to her flat, and getting Jon’s page safely back to the office, in the least suspicious manner possible. Everyone invented separate household accidents to explain their injuries (except Martin, who decided to just  change into some real clothes and claim he’d woken up in some alley, because… what crime were they going to suspect him of? He’d been in a coma).  And then there were some minor complications when it turned out that Tim had been declared legally dead at some point, and they had to sort out some things with police and set a court date to get that reversed before they could process his health coverage. So that was awkward.

Sasha wasn’t updated on what was going on as a nurse patiently bandaged her arms, because her phone was still broken. There’d been no point in replacing it, since it always seemed to work fine for her regardless, but she was starting to suspect that that was only true near the Institute. She was going to have to get a second phone, and be very careful not to do anything spooky with it. Or just spend all her time in the Institute. It had taken her this long to notice, which was a good indication of how much time she spent there already.

She wanted to see how the others were doing, particularly Martin, but that would be suspicious as hell. If anyone suspected they’d been involved in the incident, them all turning up at the hospital on the same day was already suspicious as hell, as Tim had pointed out at length while she badgered him into getting his deep, messy cuts professionally treated and that “actually Basira is really good with a needle and thread” did NOT count as an adequate health care plan. But the incredibly weary look on the nurse’s face as she’d tried to make conversation with Sasha by asking where she worked and Sasha had replied “the Magnus Institute” convinced her that there was simply no point in trying too hard not to be suspicious. To the hospital staff, it was probably a drop in the ocean of Magnus Institute Medical Bullshit, and either the police would show up in relation to the incident or they wouldn’t.

So when the nurse told her she was done, Sasha thanked her, threw caution to the wind, and went to find Martin. Only to be told he wasn’t there.

“What do you mean he – he disappeared again?! Do you guys not have any security or – ?”

“He checked himself out, ma’am.”

“He… he’d been in a coma. Aren’t you guys required to, like, hold him? For observation?”

“We can’t hold someone against their will except in very specific circumstances. He was very pushy about getting discharged.”

Martin? Pushy? “He was alone, though? Nobody… forcing him to do anything, or anything?”

“Not that I saw, ma’am.”

“Not that you – ugh!” Seriously? He’d just been kidnapped twice by powerful magical entities, nearly died, and within a few hours of being rescued he’d just walked off on his own?! He was worse than Jon!

She pulled out her phone, cursed quietly, and went to find Tim so  _ he _ could text everyone.

\------------------------------

  
  


Martin’s head hurt. The light of the setting sun was too bright, the world was too loud and he felt… a lot of things, all at once.

He had the vague sense of dreaming vividly during his coma, but he couldn’t remember much of it. Something about climbing? And now he seemed, somehow, in adequate physical health and awake and just… here. Alive. Among people. People who kept expecting him to feel certain things, or say certain things, or react in certain ways and he just couldn’t figure any of that out for the moment.

A mostly empty coffee shop caught his eye. An unfamiliar one; good. He didn’t want to… deal with familiar people or places, for the moment. And he was famished. He spent a minute or so staring at the selection of pastries before remembering he didn’t have his wallet.  Dammit.

He glanced apologetically at the impatient barista  waiting to close as he turned to leave, then froze. He recognised… no, not her. Something inside her. This woman had a story, and he had to know what it was, he just had to.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked. He glanced down at her nametag – Colleen.

Martin leaned on the counter and looked into her eyes. “Tell me what happened to you, Colleen.”

And she did.


	114. Chapter 114

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colleen tells her story. Trevor and Julia take action.

Colleen hadn’t told anyone about her encounter with the strange woman with the car full of spiders. She’d forgotten most of it, having pushed it to the back of her mind and tried to bury it. But when the tired-looking man had asked her to tell him what happened, she knew exactly what he meant, and the memories came flooding back, bright and clear, along with the words to describe them.

He stared right at her with the most intense gaze she’d ever seen as she explained  the man who’d come into the shop pretending to be Dale, who  _ wasn’t _ Dale, even though the pictures of Dale were suddenly of him. About the woman who’d made her very nervous, and made the Man Who Wasn’t Dale nervous, who sat down and listened while he told her things. (Was this man like that woman? Was that what was happening?) She’d forgotten the details of the conversation, all meaningless names to her drowned out in the terror of what had happened afterward, but under this man’s gaze they came back; the man had spoken about being bound to a table, the woman had blamed people called Dekker and Fielding and pressed him for answers.

She described the Man Who Wasn’t Dale’s words about a tramp in the tunnels underneath something called the Magnus Institute, looking for an ancient library. About how relieved he’d looked, how quickly he’d left, once the woman had let him. About how she’d asked Colleen to come and help with her car and Colleen, although she knew deep in her bones that she was about to die horribly, had seen no alternative but to close up shop and follow her out.

Colleen wanted to cry, but her voice remained clear and even as she explained following the woman for three blocks and stopping at a white car that she knew was the right one. How, without really understanding why, she’d opened the boot and stared down into the white mass of cobwebs littered with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny spiders How she had started to climb into the boot.

And how, just then, a woman she didn’t know stalked angrily out of a coffee shop right next to the car. She was cradling a locket. Nobody else was paying any attention to Colleen or the car, but the woman noticed, scowled, and gestured with her free hand; the webs in the boot caught alight. Colleen had never thought of cobwebs as flammable, but they went up immediately; Colleen pulled back from the sudden heat, glanced around for her captor (gone) or her saviour (gone), turned, and ran.

And the next day, she’d gone into work like normal, and tried to forget the whole experience. Until now.

Tears were streaming down Colleen’s face as she finished her story. The man nodded solemnly, thanked her, and simply walked out of the shop.

Colleen  closed up and went home.

\----------------------

  
  


Mary spotted Martin pretty quickly, in a coffee shop talking to the barista. Not wanting to crowd him, she texted the others that he was safe and waited for him to finish his conversation and leave before falling into step beside him.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Surprisingly good, actually. Given the whole… coma thing. I think I just needed a bit of fresh air and sun.”

“Exposure to sunlight is important for the synthesis of vitamin D, and the production of several mood and energy regulating hormones,” Mary noted. “Your back doesn’t hurt? You’re supposed to be missing a big patch of skin.”

“Oh, no; that’s healed up.”

“Without a graft? That’s very unusual.”

“I suppose so. Should I be worried about it, do you think?”

“I don’t know. I only know what the books and my college class say.”

“I guess that’s becoming less relevant for me all the time.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Um. Thanks. For rescuing me.”

Mary frowned, confused. “Did you think we wouldn’t?”

“I, um. I didn’t really expect you to succeed? To be honest? I don’t… I don’t think I did. I don’t remember all that much.”

Mary gave him a hug. She hadn’t had any practice at hugging, and she didn’t think she was doing it right (how hard were you supposed to squeeze? How high up the body were the arms supposed to go?), but Martin relaxed a bit, so she mustn’t have messed it up too badly. “ Everyone was so scared,” she told him. “We were so worried we weren’t going to be able to find you. Everyone threw themselves into it, Tim got into fights with two different cults and I don’t think Sasha slept, and then you weren’t there and we had to start again and thought we’d lost you forever… I’m not going to let that happen again. I won’t slip up again.”

“Mary, this wasn’t your fault.”

“It was. I’m your bodyguard. I wasn’t guarding your body. I went to buy headphones instead.”

“ Mary, you’re not responsible for my safety every minute of the day. The cultists thought we were going to enact a ritual and were waiting for a chance to grab me. Mary Keay was waiting for her chance to grab me. This was going to happen. By the way, what… what happened, with the cultists?”

“Tim and his friends cut them up and shot them, I think. The ones who were in the building where they were trying to hold you, anyway.”

“You mean Basira and Da – ?”

“ No,  Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert.”

M artin stared. “The… the Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert in our statements? As in, Robert Montauk’s daughter and the vampire hunter?”

“Yes, those ones.”

“But where… how… never mind, I’ll ask Tim later.”

“You might want to phrase your questions differently if you do. You know he hates being compelled.”

Martin blushed. “I… I didn’t think. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Mary said. Was that wrong? Should it bother her? Would it bother humans in general, or just Tim?

No, no; she was going to be who she was. If things didn’t bother her, she wasn’t going to try to be someone they did bother.

“Anyway, I have a plan to keep you safer from now on,” Mary said.

“There’s no need to – ”

“I think we should all move in together.”

“… what?”

So Mary got to work explaining her apartment building plan. Now that they had Martin back, everything would work.

When they were all together, everyone would be safe.

\---------------------------

  
  


Trevor and Julia sighted the apartment building, exchanged a glance, and separated.

They’d taken careful note of the exact position and entrance and egress points of Daisy and Basira’s apartment when they’d been inside, discussing the book. Technically, their highest priority target was the thing pretending to be a human, but it seemed both less dangerous and less intelligent than these two, so they had to be the first strike. If they took out anyone else first, Daisy and Basira would go to ground immediately and try to take Trevor and Julia by surprise, and that was a risk best avoided. So they had to be the first targets.

Someone was approaching. Julia slipped behind a tree and watched. Tim; unarmed, so far as she could tell. Didn’t even seem to have any concealed weapons.

He leaned against the other side of her tree. “Are you sure you want to do this, Julia?”

Trap. They’d snuck out of the building and were using Tim as bait to draw her out so they could kill her. Julia stayed still and quiet.

“I get it,” Tim continued. “You’re suspicious of the Institute, you definitely don’t like Mary or Jon – bit hypocritical for people who want that book as much as you did, by the way – and we’re dangerous, just like you’re dangerous. You know monsters when you see them, right? You can trust you and Trevor to be doing good out there, but you can’t trust us, right? Especially not with the kinds of allies we have. Best to eliminate the problem and move on?

“ But here’s the thing, Julia. We’re out there trying to do good, too, and Basira and Daisy and the archive crew don’t know you any better than you know them. We can let mistrust tear us apart and leave the world defenseless, or we can all just pick some other monsters to hunt. Because if you try to take on those two, there’s a pretty high chance that you will lose. They’re younger than Trevor and more experienced than you, and if Trevor lets me walk away from this without putting a bullet in my brain – yes, I know you’re there, but I don’t think you’ll shoot with this much risk of hitting Julia – then it’ll be three against two. Even if you do win, it’ll be a costly fight. And you’ll have the Institute after you, out for blood. 

“There’s a whole world of monsters out there, and only two of you. Even if we were evil, and you wiped us out, that’s a drop in the bucket. But if one or both of you go down doing it? Is it worth it?”

He’d made it clear that he knew exactly where she was. There was no point in keeping quiet. “You could come with us,” Julia said.

“I don’t think so, no. I like you, Julia. I hope you still like me. And when you’re back in London, I’d love to meet up with you again. But my fight is here, and these people are my family,  and if you do force me to pick sides, you’re not going to win. Here’s… here’s the thing. When I was first exposed to all this creepy spook stuff, I hated it. Monsters killed my brother, did you know that? They skinned him. Made me watch. And I got trapped at the Institute, and I tried to find ways to kill Mary just like I’m sure you are. But when I started getting a taste for the blood, do you know whose blood it was? Murderers, rapists, paedophiles. People who abused others and made the world worse, who stole from the weak and let them starve on the street.  _ Humans _ .  The things in the shadows take the occasional straggler, but we hurt each other much worse than they can. So these days, I’m not inclined to base my targets on whether something has a weird face or empty eyes or can shoot fire from its hands. Things are more complicated than that.”

“They’re really not. They’re very, very simple.”

“Are they? Was your father a monster? Are you?”

“Don’t you dare!”

“You’re right. Sorry. I shouldn’t have… I mean, look. I’ve made mistakes in this line of work, right? Ones I’m not proud of. I’m sure you’ve made mistakes, too. This is… what we do is dangerous, and not only to ourselves. And the only way we can control it, really, I think, is to keep perspective. Chasing shouldn’t be a first resort, because sometimes… well, I guess I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know about this, right? You’ve been doing it longer than I have.

“My point is, there are other monsters out there. Other things that we know are hurting people. And if you want to attack us on suspicion of maybe being dangerous because the Institute is really spooky, I can’t stop you, but is that really the hill you want to die on? Is that where you want to risk your lives, when you’re needed elsewhere? Think about it.”

T im walked away. When he was out of sight, Trevor walked over. “Well, weren’t that a speech and a half.”

“What do you think?”

He considered this. “It is a big target,” he said. “Risky. And the Institute is a building. None of those monsters are goin’ anywhere.”

“Our current mission with the cult is time sensitive.”

“Exactly. Now that we’ve got our book, we should be rushin’ after them.”

Julia nodded. “Let’s go get packed, then.”


	115. Chapter 115

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things have gotten a bit intense, let's chill out and be happy for a while.

“ Due to extensive renovations, we’ll be asking you to move to a free apartment higher up in the complex,” the woman said in a monotone, staring directly into Robert’s eyes.

Robert fought the urge to step back and tried to fix her with a penetrating stare. She’d introduced herself as the new residential manager, and looked, to her credit, pretty much how he expected a residential manager to look, but there was something… robotic about her demeanour, and penetrating about her stare, that put him on edge. He couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t given him her name.

“Now, see here; we have a contract. You can’t kick us out of – ”

“Our upstairs apartments are all equipped with an additional bathroom and more modern cooking facilities. As such, they are usually fifteen pounds per week more expensive but our contract with you is for the lower, ground-floor rat e.”

“Wait. You’re saying you want to move us to a nicer apartment for the same cost?” Well that changed things.

“Yes. We apologise for the inconvenience of the move, sir.”

“No, no, it’s… um, I need to talk to my family about this. Alright?”

“Here are the keys to your new flat, sir. We are also willing to waive a fortnight’s rent to compensate for the inconvenience. Can you complete the move by Saturday?”

“Ah. Well, I mean, that is very kind of you, but Saturday’s quite – ”

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir.” The residential manager smiled, her entire demeanour becoming suddenly friendly, and Robert couldn’t help but notice how many teeth she seemed to have. “I’m so excited to be working here, and looking forward to getting to know everybody. If you have any problems in the new flat whatsoever, don’t hesitate to call on me. I know exactly where you live and can be at your door within the minute, so it’s no inconvenience at all.” She held out a hand. Robert, nervously, shook it, and snatched his own hand back the moment it was polite to do so.

“ Nice to meet you,” he managed to mumble before shutting the door and deadbolting it.

\---------------------------

  
  


Martin finished cutting a large hole in the plasterboard of the basement wall just as Mary came down the stairs. “Will this work?” he asked.

Mary bit her lip. “I think so? I’m not… it’s not  specifically what I’ m for, but it should be within my… scope… if I’m diligent enough.  It’s tricky; it’s a populated building, and I don’t usually drag a bunch of humans around with me. But I think I can do it. I’ve already turned in my two week’s notice at the Institute, I don’t think I have the capacity to play both roles.”

“I’m so jealous. I wish I could resign.”

“You’d probably get kidnapped less if you did.”

“Hey, I think that the People’s Church and Mary Keay count as one kidnapping, not two. Mary stole me from the Church. So I’ve only been kidnapped once, which is a pretty good record.”

“ Good. Let’s hold onto it.”

“Guys,” Tim said, emerging from the hole Martin had just cut, “I just did the route from the Institute and it’s clear. I’m going to move my place to a side tunnel a bit closer to this basement.”

“Or you could live in an apartment like a normal person,” Martin pointed out.

“That’s just asking to be ambushed. Tunnels are safer.”

“Daisy and Basira are taking an apartment.”

“If Daisy and Basira jump off a cliff, should I?”

A  thought struck Martin. “How well – I mean, I suppose you know those tunnels quite well by now.”

Tim shrugged. “Only some of the edge ones. They’re a good way to get around the city. Going too deep gets you lost, though.”

“I’d like to know whether you’ve ever found anything strange down there.”

“It’s a network of ancient Smirke tunnels latticed with natural caves and all of it keeps changing and seems to be magically confusing. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“An ancient and powerful library.”

“Um… no. Should I be on the lookout for one?”

“I don’t know. It’s like, third-hand information. Somebody overheard somebody explaining that another person suspected that… well, there may or may not be one down there, and it may or may not be important, or have something to do with… apple trees. I think.”

Tim stared. “Are you feeling okay? Should we take you back to the hospital for more brain scans?”

“No, this isn’t… it’s fine. Just let me know if you find a library, alright?”

“Martin, if I found an ancient magic library down there, I would definitely tell you.”

“Right. Great. Also, don’t read any books you find down there.”

“In a world full of Leitners, you think I’d go ahead and read mysterious tunnel books?”

“No. No, of course not.”

And so over the next week or so, they moved in to three ground floor apartments, directly over the basement. Daisy and Basira were set up on Martin’s right, and Mary and Sasha on his left; Tim, while he insisted he lived in the tunnels, spent a lot of time in Martin’s flat stealing access to his shower and stove, so there was pretty much always someone around. (Melanie, predictably, wasn’t talking to any of them.)

The basement door was generally locked, but Mary had keys cut for all of them. They also cut trapdoors into the cheap wooden floors of each apartment so that if they needed to escape into the tunnels, they could do so easily. If anyone asked about the noise, Mary would fix them with her blank stare and recite that renovations were taking place, then resume her stalking of the building’s floors and vaguely menacing performance of general maintenance tasks that she called ‘paying the rent’. Martin wasn’t sure it was completely ethical to be terrorising a building full of tenants in order to bend the laws of the universe for easy accommodation, but he was hardly one to judge. Not when Colleen’s trauma had been added to his dreams every night.

H e took Jon home, too. Martin didn’t really want to admit it, but the whole kidnapping thing had definitely rattled him. On the rare occasions that he found himself alone for too long,  he started jumping at every sound and looking over his shoulder constantly. Jon wouldn’t be able to actually help if anyone tried to grab him, but so long as they kept his actual page hidden, nobody could hurt him, either. And he’d be able to report what had happened to everyone else.

Anyway, that’s what Martin told himself when he and Jon set up regular movie nights.

“I cannot believe you own a VCR,” Jon said as Martin slipped in a cassette of Poltergeist.

“Sasha owns a VCR.”

“Yeah, because Tim stole one to play tapes to try to find you.”

“Oh.” He grinned. “Pity I wasn’t available for that, she could’ve borrowed mine.”

Jon laughed at that. Even as a ghost, his face seemed to light up when he laughed. Martin tried to remember if he’d ever actually seen him laugh when he was alive. He’d been so… so stressed all the time, so snappy, trying to do a good job. Martin had been trying, too, but he’d been a lot worse at it than Jon – or, he was beginning to realise, a lot worse at faking it, at least.

“How are so into horror movies, anyway?” Jon asked. “Witnessing horror is your day job.”

“Yeah, but real horror and horror fiction are different.”

“Nothing on the screen can hurt you, I suppose,” Job said thoughtfully. “Although, if the monsters are made from our fears, could a good, popular horror movie bring its own antagonist into being?”

“ Something for the researchers to look into,” Martin shrugged. “If they were doing useful supernatural research instead of just being a front for the archives. Hang on, why aren’t they doing useful research?  We have a database full of real cases and data on the fourteen fears and all that. Why are we keeping it to ourselves?”

“I’m… not sure. I suppose Elias – ”

“Elias is in jail! Who cares what he wants? Giving out that information to everyone might make things worse, though… it’s something to talk over with the group, anyway. Let me start the movie and then I’ll go cook my lasagne.”

“Martin. When you say you’re going to cook your lasagne, you do mean that you’re going to put it in the oven, right?”

“No, it was precooked at the factory. I’ll just reheat it in the microwave.”

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Martin, the consistency of the cheese won’t come out right.”

“It’ll be fine, it takes too long in the oven.”

“Is it still frozen? The lasagne?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Martin, it’s going to be hot on the outside and frozen in the middle.”

“Then I’ll just eat the outside parts and microwave it again.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jon muttered, as Martin headed into the kitchen to heat his lasagne using a perfectly legitimate method that worked just fine and was far quicker than waiting to preheat an oven.  He didn’t see what Jon kept getting so worked up about.

\--------------------------

  
  


“ I’ll be gone for awhile,” Sasha explained to Martin, Basira and Jon as they walked through the underground tunnels to work. “I’m going to the North Pole to try to talk to Manuela Dominguez.”

“Oh,” Martin said. “Is that… I mean, won’t it be hard to get a flight to the North Pole?”

“Depends how closely anyone except Melanie is looking at the expense claim reports. You’d be amazed at how loudly money talks.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Basira said. “It might be dangerous. I can’t leave, but I’ll talk to Daisy and Tim about going with you.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck. Though I’ll be amazed if she wants to help us with anything, after all that nonsense rescuing Martin. Do you think she knows about that?”

“I’m hoping she doesn’t. I’m also hoping that even if she does, she hates the Eye enough to help us anyway. We essentially want her to help weaken it, so if we do this in the right way,  she’ll probably be willing to help. And if not, well, what have we got to lose?”

“Your life?” Jon ventured.

“I’ll be very careful. More importantly, Jon, will you still be here when I get back?”

Everyone looked uncomfortable at that.  Nobody had wanted to say it, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that Jon’s willingness to stick around was going o wear thin sooner or later. Martin as a more advanced Archivist than he’d been before he died, so he couldn’t offer advice on that any more, and he’d remarked on several occasions that existence just felt like… waiting. He tried to downplay the discomfort these days, but all of them remembered his previous descriptions. Being a ghost was unpleasant and he wasn’t afraid to die, so how much longer would they have him?

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Jon promised, and everyone relaxed a little. “Just make sure you do come back.  If you go before I do, Sasha, I’ll be so mad…”

“ Don’t worry, Jon, I’m not  _ that _ competitive.”

“Prove it. Come back alive.”


	116. Chapter 116

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim ships jonmartin.

“ The trick is making sure the onions are the right level of browned before throwing in the hard veg, and making sure they’re the right level of softness before throwing in the greens,” Tim explained over the hiss of the wok. “Otherwise, something’s going to be overcooked or undercooked, and you’re just going to end up with a mess.”

“And Jon won’t roll his eyes when I cook this?” Martin asked.

“At this stage I think Jon’s expectations of your culinary prowess are so low that he’ll be pleasantly surprised if you can turn an oven on. Cook the Stoker Family Vegetarian Stir Fry for your date night and you’ll blow the illusion of his socks right off, even if he can’t eat it. Get me those plates?”

“It’s not a date night!” Martin protested, passing him two plates and cursing how obviously a blush showed up on his skin. “We just… stay up and talk and watch movies.”

“Well, that’s either a primary school sleepover, or a date night, and I don’t think Jon was ever not a sweater-wearing Professional Adult Man, so that leaves just one option. Here, eat this and weep at my mastery.”

Martin covered his own flustered panic with a few bites of food. It sure tasted like food. Yep, that was definitely a stir fry right there. “This is amazing,” he told Tim, trying to sound convincing.

“Damn right it is.”

“But Jon’s not – I mean, I don’t think he likes me like that.”

“Martin, that man literally turned his back on the veil of death for you.”

“Well, I… I needed his help. And not everyone who was in the book wanted to be destroyed right away. And then there was the kidnapping thing…”

“And now you share an apartment and watch movies together and bicker about domestic things like dietary habits.”

“Well that’s just… I don’t even know if he likes men!”

“I could find out for you.”

“Tim, no!”

“I’ll be real discrete about it. Oh, I know! I’ll flirt with him! I’ve still got couple of days before we leave for the North Pole, that’s plenty of time. I’ll pretend I’m interested in him, which is like Gay Easy Mode because of how hot I am, and his reaction will tell me if you have a chance or not!” Tim was grinning. He had to be joking. He was probably joking.

“ Timothy Stoker, if you do that I will get Sasha to divine Julia’s phone number and I’ll text her pictures of you at the twenty sixteen office Christmas party.”

Tim paled. “You took pictures?”

“I took pictures.”

“You to that, I’ll submit a workplace harrassment complaint.”

“You don’t work for the archives any more. I’ve never been your boss.”

“Hmm. Well played, Archivist. It seems you have forced me to watch you two absolute disasters be painfully oblivious around each other for even longer.”

“We’re not… look, I’m sure Jon has too much going on to be interested in – ”

“He has literally nothing else going on whatsoever.”

“Which is the problem, isn’t it? I mean, what am I supposed to do? I can’t ask him out, I can’t confess. He’s… he’s basically our social prisoner. You’ve heard how he talks about himself. Like he’s a fancy artefact.”

“He kind of is.”

“Yeah, I know, but he’s also a person, and I think he forgets that, sometimes; he doesn’t… he doesn’t value himself properly, or stand up for himself. And it’s not like we can do anything about that, because we have complete power over him here; we dictate when he’s around and when he’s not, and while of course none of us would dream of forcing him to exist or not exist, there’s simply no way to change the fact that we have control over that and he doesn’t. I feel like any… any sort of… I think it would be wrong, ethically. It’d be awkward if her refused me, but it’d be a hundred times worse if he felt like he couldn’t. You know?”

“ Yeah . That’s a good point, actually.  Wow, your situation’s a mess.”

“Uh-huh.  _ My _ situation’s a mess. How’s Julia?”

“Hey, my violent girlfriend and her supernaturally cancer-free vampire killing father figure maybe wanting to kill my various violent and monstrous friends and deciding the confrontation isn’t worth it has nothing on your awkward knowledge avatar slash ghost star-crossed not-romance.”

“I’m starting to get the vague impression that all of our lives are kind of weird.”

“You need your spook powers to tell you that?”

“Basira and Daisy have it sorted out, at least.  Maybe we should all take advice from them.”

“Probably a bad idea. I’m sure if we all got our shit sorted, the Drama Gods would have Sasha come back from the North Pole declaring she’s dating some kind of darkness monster or something.”

“Drama Gods would be a nice break from Fear Gods, at least. Easier to handle.”

“See, it’s statements like that that tell me you didn’t grow up around theatre kids.”

\----------------------------

  
  


Jon had invented a game for himself where, when he felt his consciousness coalescing, he tried to guess who was summoning him before they came into view. Since Sasha had gone on her journey, the game wasn’t difficult, because it was Martin ninety per cent of the time. The other ten per cent was usually Basira with a question, or looking for someone to bounce ideas off, or someone summoning him for Mary.

So he was very surprised to appear in front of Tim.

“Tim,” Jon greeted him, glancing up at the calendar and 24-hour clock that Martin had hung prominently in the living room so that Jon could quickly orient himself in time. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah. Why haven’t you told Martin you’re in love with him?”

Jon felt it was quite unfair that his ghostly projection could still blush. It didn’t even have any blood. “That’s not… any feelings I may or may not have towards Martin are between us.”

“So you’re saying you are gonna tell him. If they’re between you, then…”

“That’s not what I – this is none of your business, Tim!”

“Oh, is the ex-Spooky Magical Voyeur who’s in love with the current Spooky Magical Voyeur going to lecture me on what my business is? Honestly, watching you two dance around each other is just painful at this point. It’s so hard to live here when you two are such disasters.”

“You don’t live here. You’re a tunnel hobo who breaks in to use Martin’s appliances and leave prawn chip crumbs all over his couch.”

“Leaving prawn chip crumbs all over the couch is a time-honoured and sacred roommate duty, far more important than silly details like where someone actually lives. That man has had a crush on you for years, you live together – or the closest thing to it in your case, I suppose – and you’ve already lost or nearly lost each other so many times; the circumstances are perf – ”

“That’s exactly the problem! He was interested in the man I used to be, when I was alive. Which baffles me, to be honest, since I was – ”

“A real dick to him.”

“ – somewhat uptight, I admit, but he… look, people change. And I’m dead. And before you say anything, no matter what Sasha thinks, that’s not an excuse; it’s just a fact. I very much doubt he’s interested in me any more, and I’m certainly not going to run after him like a bus I just missed and expect him to stop for me out of pity. And if he is, well, he’s most certainly seeing me as the man I was a few years ago, and none of us are those people any more. I’m not going to trick him into a relationship with a memory and break his heart when he realises the deception. I won’t use that against him; it’s not… it would be wrong. Ethically speaking.”

“Wow. You think his vague memories of his paranoid arsehole boss inform his view of you more than the hours and hours you spend together now? You honestly thing Martin is that stupid?”

“No! That just… I mean, if he’s in love with me at all, he’s in love with a memory. And if he isn’t, then he isn’t. He’s certainly not… I saw a good thing too late, and now I simply have to deal with that. It isn’t Martin’s problem, and I’m not going to make him uncomfortable with it. My emotions are a lot easier to handle now anyway, since they’re more… distant, and – ”

“My god. I thought you two were a soap opera, but you’re two separate internal soap operas.”

“Well, I’m sorry that we can’t all throw our hearts around so casually as you.”

“Why not? You should try it. Afraid you might actually live a little?”

“What is it with you people? Why can’t any of you understand that I’m dead?”

“No, we get it. We just don’t care. Yeah, yeah, your life is over, you don’t feel things like you used to, you can’t interact with the world… but you do have feelings, or something close enough as to make no difference. I doubt that Mary has ‘feelings’ like we do either, and she’s managing just fine. And you exist, whether you want to call it ‘life’ or not, for as long as you want to. I just think it makes more sense to focus on what we are than grieve about what we’re not.”

“Did you summon me to lecture me about relationships?”

“Oh, no. I just wanted to know if Martin owns a record player. I found one that would suit his whole retro thing and was thinking of pitching in for it with some of the others as a Christmas present, but I thought, maybe he already has one stashed away in his bedroom or something? And I’m not going to go looking through his bedroom. But I thought you would probably know.”

“What makes you think I would know what was in Martin’s bedroom?”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Have a conversation with him and maybe you’ll find out.”

“Tim!”


	117. Chapter 117

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin finally Talks To Someone.

Martin woke up and stared at the wall, trying to banish from his mind the images of endless tunnels, of explosions and fire, of a car full of spiders. It didn’t matter what he put on his shirt when he slept. It didn’t matter what he tried to do in his dreams. Eleanor and Colleen and even Tim noticed him, were afraid of him, hated him. Tim seemed perfectly friendly with him when they were awake but that… that had to take a toll, right?

And his head hurt. Except it wasn’t pain, it was… something else. A hunger.

Martin didn’t want to say anything to disrupt the fragile peace that the community had built, but the truth was, things were not going fantastically. And in the couple of weeks since the coma, they’d been getting worse. But he was going to have to talk about it, wasn’t he? That was what they’d all agreed, when they’d decided he’d be the Archivist. They were in this together.

Except that Melanie was with Peter, and Sasha was on the way to the North Pole with Tim and Daisy, and Mary was… not very knowledgable in this area. So Martin knocked on Basira’s door.

She cracked it open and blinked at him. “Martin? It’s four in the morning.”

“Oh! Sorry. I’ll come back later.”

“No, it’s fine, I couldn’t sleep anyway. Come in. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Martin Knew that Basira couldn’t sleep because she was worried about Daisy. He also Knew that she was bothered by how many missions Daisy did without her these days, wondered if Daisy really needed her any more. He tried to stop Knowing things like this, but he knew it was useless.

“I’m hungry,” he admitted, when they were both settled with their drinks.

“I might have some leftover – ”

“Not that kind of hungry. Food doesn’t help.”

“This is a monster thing?”

“Yeah. I’ve been… I’ve been needing to read statements for awhile, you know that.”

“We have plenty of statements.”

“I know, and I’ve been reading them, but it doesn’t… they don’t work as well, since the coma. It’s like trying to live on rice crackers. They never fully fill you up, and if you try to do it forever, you’ll end up malnourished.”

“What do you need, then?”

Martin sipped his tea to give himself a moment. But he couldn’t avoid talking about it forever. “After the coma, when I left the hospital? I took a statement from someone. Directly.”

“You mean like…?”

“I mean I went out and found someone with a bad experience. She didn’t know the consequences, and she didn’t come to me. I sought her out and Asked her. I made her tell me. And afterwards, I felt so much better.”

“Jesus, Martin!”

“I know! I wasn’t thinking clearly, I just wanted to go for a walk and clear my head, I didn’t even realise what was happening until – no, that’s an excuse. I let myself Ask her because I needed it. I was trying to heal, I was starving, and she was there. I can’t stop wondering, if I get that hungry again, will I do it again?”

“I hope not! Now she’s going to dream – ”

“I know that! I’m reminded of that every night, okay? I know. I can’t even stagger my sleep schedule any more, or there’s no one in the archives during the day.”

For a moment, Basira looked at him like he’d expected her to. Like he deserved. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“What happened?” she asked. “In the coma.”

“I don’t really know. I don’t remember much, I just… I know I made a choice. To die, or to become something that couldn’t be killed so easily. I chose the second thing, obviously.”

“Are you still…?”

“I’m still me, yeah. I’m just more of the Archivist now, I suppose.”

“Less human.”

“I… I guess.”

“Well. We knew to expect this sort of thing when you took the job, right? I didn’t expect a ghost book coma to be involved, but whatever. We knew there’d be… problems, and the whole point of our arrangement is to deal with them together. So. I guess we need to find you a food source that doesn’t traumatise innocent people for life.”

“You say it like it’s easy. Like you expect to just be able to find easy ways out of these problems.”

“There’s a way out of anything. No harm in looking, right? Now, does anything else feed you? Other than live statements, or the written statements that don’t work so well now?”

“I… used to use the ghost book. They’re somewhere in the middle, I think? But we don’t have it any more, and Jon’s the only ghost we have, so…”

“Still good to know. Maybe we don’t have the ghosts, but we might have… hmm. You should take a statement from Mary.”

“I can’t do that to Mary! What if she sees me in her nightmares?”

“Martin, she’s literally an incarnation of human terror. If she’s even capable of nightmares, I don’t think they’re going to bother her all that much. If that doesn’t work, I suppose there’s the obvious solution of damage mitigation. Taking live statements from people for whom it matters a lot less.”

“Who does it – ?”

“People about to die. We can let Daisy and Tim know about the problem; I bet they could use your skills on some of their missions. Or we could see if Oliver Banks is willing to give names. Or if that seems too dangerous for you, I still have some friends in the police. There are plenty of truly evil criminals locked up who deserve all the nightmares you can give them.”

“I don’t think that’s… I mean, isn’t that technically torture? The Declaration of Human Rights – ”

“We’ll try the death thing, then, if it comes down to it. But we should ask Mary if she’s willing to give a statement first. We know you can compel things like her; it’ be very interesting to see what you get out of her statements.”

Martin narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Is this just an excuse to experiment?”

“Only partly. This is useful information, and to handle this, we need information. Aren’t I the only person in the archives who wasn’t a research scientist? Why am I the only one who wants to find out how this works?”

“Actually, I think Sasha’s the only person still in the archives who has any kind of research qualifications, and she’s not here right now.”

“Right. Any other changes we need to know about?”

Martin shrugged. “Not really. I… I Know more things, now. I still can’t control it. I think… I think I know how to do it on purpose, how to access the knowledge, but if I do, I… don’t know what will happen. Nothing good. There’s just far too much knowledge out there and basically all of it is completely useless.”

“So nothing new there, then. Just more of it.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright then. Hang in there, and I’ll try to find you a nice tasty doomed person as soon as I can.”

“Um. Hmm. Thanks?”

\-----------------------

  
  


Jordan glared at the sink of gunky water that simply refused to drain. With Suzie and Emmett hanging off their legs and Ryan and Hunter having a screaming match in the lounge, this was the last thing that Jordan needed today.

And now the doorbell was ringing. Fantastic.

Jordan pushed the twins aside and trudged over to open the door. On the other side stood a young woman, dressed practically but vaguely professionally, with the blankest expression that Jordan had ever seen.

“Hello. I’m the new residential manager. I’m here to fix your sink,” she said in a monotone.

“Um. I, I haven’t actually called anyone about…?”

“Hello. I’m the residential manager. I’m here to fix your sink.”

Not knowing what else to do, Jordan stepped aside.

The kids got well out of the way as the strangers strode through the house and stared for a moment at the full sink. Then she reached one hand into the water.

Jordan knew that an adult human hand could not fit into the drain. It simply couldn’t, even if there wasn’t a metal grate in the way. But with several sickening cracks, the stranger somehow forced their hand deep into the drain and withdrew a handful of gunk from the s-bend. The water level began to drop, very slowly.

“Thank you,” Jordan said. “It was great to meet – ”

“It’s draining very slowly. I think there’s a blockage further down the pipe.”

Jordan knew what was going to happen, but that did nothing to diminish their horror as the residential manager’s hand was once again forced down the drain somehow, to further cracking and popping noises. Jordan couldn’t see under the water, but she leaned right over the sink, seeming to push her arm in almost all the way to the elbow, and there was simply no way for a human arm to bend around the S-bend like that. Once her arm was fully down the drain, she frowned in frustration – the first expression that Jordan had seen on her face – and muttered, “Not far enough.” Further cracks and snaps resulted, and after half a minute or so, the residential manager started to withdraw her hand. She dropped a handful of something fibrous and gooey into the rubbish bin as the sink began to drain freely, took the tea towel on the oven door to clean her hand and hung the dirty tea towel neatly back up. Just one question was echoing through Jordan’s mind – they’d seen her clean her hand, but how was her jacket sleeve clean and dry? How?

The residential manager fixed Jordan with an intense stare and said in her monotone, “If you have any more problems, don’t hesitate to call me. I’m always right here. For you.”

And then she left.

Horrified silence reigned. But even as Jordan deadbolted the door and checked that each of the children were okay, they couldn’t help but note that that had been the fastest and most efficient apartment maintenance they’d ever received.


	118. Chapter 118

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fine! Here she is.

“I’m in love with you,” Jon announced, apropos of nothing, as they watched Carrie enter the prom on the screen.

Martin’s brain stopped working for a few seconds. He patiently waited while it rebooted, then ventured, “Um, what?”

“I’m not expecting anything from you,” Jon said quickly. “I just, um. I’ve been thinking quite hard about it, and that’s what seems to be going on, and it seemed… pertinent information, that you had a right to know. And now you do know. So that’s that.”

“Oh. Well. I love you, too.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean am I _sure_? Are _you_ sure?”

“Yes! I mean, I know I’m not great with feelings, but I definitely made certain about this one before bringing it up.”

“Well. Me, too. I mean, I’ve… had a while to think about it, I guess. So.”

“Right. Well.”

Martin cleared his throat. “So, I know this is a stupid question, but given our circumstances here, what exactly are we supposed to… do, with this information? I mean, we kind of did this all backwards. We already live together. We can’t go anywhere on, on…”

“And as I said,” Jon said quickly, “I don’t expect anything from you. That wouldn’t be fair. Given what I am now, if you don’t want to be, you know, tied down with a memory of a dead guy, I… I wouldn’t…”

Martin frowned. “Jon, do I really strike you as someone with a busy romantic life?”

“You could have! I mean, you’re a, a perfectly nice man.”

“I haven’t been interested in anybody except you for years.”

“Oh. Well. That simplifies things, then.” Jon cleared his throat. “I don’t know if I ever apologised. For my past behaviour. I was… unfair to you, for a long time, and – ”

“Jon, you’ve said this four times now.”

“Well. Good.”

“But if we’re going to be dating now, you have to do something for me.”

“What?” Jon asked warily.

“You have to start picking movies for movie night. I’ve dragged you through half of my horror collection. Now it’s time for _me_ to get to see _your_ tastes. We’ll take turns.”

“I’m not sure you would like the sorts of things I used to watch.”

“I’m not sure you like most of my horror movies. Your turn next time. Pick a movie and I’ll find it.”

Jon sighed. “Fine.”

It was a date.

\---------------------

  
  


Basira triple-checked the name and address on the shred of paper. Oliver had even been thorough enough to provide a photo, so there was absolutely no chance of confusion. It was the third such tip he’d given her, but the previous two hadn’t had any supernatural trauma to report; this time, she was hoping to get lucky.

The man’s name was Emory Smith, and according to Oliver, he had two days at most before something in his brain would kill him. A stroke, most likely. Basira had suggested warning him, getting him to hospital, but Oliver had just shook his head and said that never worked. “Terminus gets them all, in the end,” he’d told her, giving her an intense look that suddenly reminded her he might very well be looking at her death, and she hadn’t wanted to ask any more questions.

She met with Martin after work and took him to the peaceful little home with a well-tended lawn and healthy rose bushes. They rang the doorbell and Emory answered. Martin glanced at Basira, nodded, and cleared his throat.

“Mr Emory Smith?”

“Yes?”

“What’s the most unexplainable thing that’s ever happened to you?”

Martin looked… better, as they walked away twenty minutes later. Less restless. Less jumpy, his gaze less hungry. Less… well, Basira hadn’t been frightened of Martin, certainly not, just… reasonably wary. She’d seen Daisy get restless, before, and the look was unnerving on someone else.

“Have you asked Mary for a statement yet?” she asked.

“It never really came up,” he said.

“You don’t want to take it.”

“Of course I don’t want to take it! I should never have taken Tim’s.”

“Hmm. He doing okay?”

“He’s still in the dreams.”

“So they’re still alive.”

“Tim is.”

“Then the others probably are,” Basira noted, “because if anything dangerous happened, that idiot would get himself killed first. Never really think about how much we rely on mobile phones and internet until someone’s out of range for so long, right?”

“Us darn millennials and our modern phones.”

“I’m not a millennial.”

“Us darn millennials, nitpicking generational timelines.”

\--------------------------

  
  


FINALLY, they were at the North Pole. Sasha had forgotten how slowly time went without internet, and Tim’s jokes about her reading a darn book once in a while and hers about him being a shill for Big Publishing had worn thin days ago.

The information she’d been able to find on Manuela’s precise location had been admittedly thin, but there were only a limited number of safe places at the North Pole to be in. When one of the shell corporations that had funded the Daedelus had turned out to fund an independent research station at the North Pole, well, it had been an easy deduction.

The station didn’t have its own landing strip, but a larger one within sledding distance did. According to the people stationed there, the base they were heading to was abandoned; apparently everyone had packed up and left years ago. Either they were wrong, they were lying, or they were right, and Manuela was somewhere else in the area; the group kept on their toes as they were sledded out to what looked like a concrete warehouse in the ice. 

“You should probably stay well back until we come out,” Sasha warned the mushers, but they just laughed.

“What are you expecting to find? It’s an abandoned base. If we stay back, what happens if you need help?”

Sasha glanced at Daisy and Tim. They shrugged. Time to advance and hope for the best, she supposed.

“ Stay between us, Sash,” Tim said as he and Daisy drew their guns. “We’ll protect you.”

Daisy stepped forward and shoved open the front door of the building. Sasha wasn’t surprised to see that the weak sunlight barely made it into the door, seeming to vanish entirely within inches.

“Is this… safe?” she couldn’t help asking, even though it was a stupid question.

“Absolutely not,” Daisy said. “Come on.”

They had prepared for this. Daisy and Tim each had a large leather loop in their belts; Sasha took one in each hand before they walked into the darkness, keeping them together. The darkness clung to her, suffocating her senses, reminding her how small a thing she was imprisoned in her own body and that everything else out there was an illusion her senses played for her on the backdrop of a black infinity. The building around her sounded massive, and tiny, and full of enemies, and empty.

Her two guards immediately focused.  She couldn’t see, but she could feel their demeanours change as they became alert, ready to act. Whatever it was about the dark that seemed to blot out Sasha’s world and push her towards panic didn’t seem to bother them all that much – if anything, Tim’s breathing in particular seemed to relax.  This was what they did, and she could trust them to keep her safe.

Sasha was struck with a sudden memory of joking around in the archives with Tim about where Jon sourced his endless sweater vest collection. God, they were such different people back then.

There were a hundred small sounds in the darkness, most of which Daisy and Tim ignored.  But then at one, that sounded identical to any other scuffle or rustle to Sasha, they both suddenly turned. They lurched forward, their belt loops pulled out of Sasha’s hands as a brief scuffle took place. Sasha stood in the darkness, frozen in unidentifiable fear, while an unfamiliar woman’s voice shouted and swore, handcuffs clicked closed, and a faint, weak light – one of the highest-powered torches they could find on the open market – winked into existence.

“Over here,” Tim called, waving the light, sounding much farther away than the light would suggest.

“Don’t hurt her!” Sasha called back, jogging over. She got a brief glimpse of the thin cuffed woman before putting a hand firmly on Daisy’s shoulder to orient herself and clicking Tim’s torch off. The woman audibly relaxed as the darkness settled in once more.

“Are you Manuela Dominguez?”Sasha asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name’s Sasha James.” Might as well rip the bandaid off quickly. “I work for the Magnus Institute.”

“One of Gertrude’s lackeys. The old woman didn’t even have the respect to come and finish me off herself, hmm?”

“We’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk.”

The cuffs clinked. “It sure doesn’t seem like it.”

“If we take those off, will you stick around long enough to hear us out?”

“What do you think?”

Probably not, then. “I’m here to propose an alliance.”

Manuela laughed at that. “An alliance? Between the Eye and the Dark? Are you mad?”

“No. An alliance against the Eye. It can’t see us here, right?”

“No. That twisted voyeur of yours is powerless when there is nothing to observe.”

“Good, then we can talk freely. My friends and I were tricked into the service of the Eye. It’s not a position we want to be in, and it’s not a position we can do anything about. We’re worried that our boss is going to attempt the Watcher’s Crown at some point, and we don’t know when, or how, or even what the ritual entails. He can see everything we do, so we’re not in a position to stop it. I’d imagine that we’re in agreement that we don’t want that particular ritual to succeed?”

“What does it matter?” Manuela asked bitterly.

“Um. I’m sorry? I got the impression from your statement that you’d be very much against that sort of thing.”

“Yes, well. The world is pointless anyway at this point, isn’t it? Three hundred years building our mission, and we failed. It’s already lost.”

“How so? The comet will return. You went into space and built a dark sun, according to your statement. In three hundred years, technology will have advanced where it should be even easier. Just help us hold the world together long enough to get a second shot.”

“You want me to believe that you intend to help  us build a world of darkness? Ha!”

“No. If this were three hundred years in the future, we’d be enemies. But it isn’t. I want the world to stay as it is forever. You want it to stay as it is for three hundred years. Unless you’re secretly immortal, I don’t see a conflict here.”

Manuela was silent. Probably trying to think through the situation, find the trap. Eventually, she said, “So, I suppose that if we’re allies, you want me to tell you where – ”

“Tell me nothing.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me anything. I work under the Watcher’s gaze every day. Elias can read minds, and we’ve been manipulated before. Anything we know should be considered compromised. Safest to keep it to yourself.”

“A Watcher who’s refusing information?”

“Believe me, I’m curious as hell, but we have to be practical here. Maybe I’ll track down all your secrets after the world is safe. Until then, will you help us?”

“Ha. Your boss destroys our ritual, kills Raynor, and now – ”

“Gertrude’s not my boss. She’s dead.”

“… What?”

“She was killed a few years ago. Murdered.  I don’t know how or if she interfered with your ritual, but nobody in the archives now had anything to do with it. And Raynor was shot in the head by a police officer mid-transfer. Do you truly believe that the Divine Host could be destroyed by something so mundane as a  _ bullet _ ?”

Manuela’s breath caught. “You’re saying he’s still out there. That the ritual might be salvaged for the next comet pass after all.”

“I have no idea. I know very little about him. What I’m saying is that he was ‘killed’ by a police officer in a suspiciously neat and easy way, that his ‘death’ was immediately reported to us through a statement in a suspiciously convenient manner, and that if anyone can hide themselves completely from the Eye it would be him.  But you know the situation better than I do.”

“Hmm. What do you want?”

“Artefacts.”

“… What?”

“There are places that the Eye can’t see. Ways to hide things. That’s what we need. Something portable would be best. You made a _ dark sun out of anti-science _ . If there’s anyone who can temporarily blind that bastard, or shield important things from it, it’s you.”

Manuela didn’t answer. Still trying to find the trap, probably.

“Do you need a lift out of here?” Sasha asked.

“No.”

“Right.” Sasha pushed a piece of paper into her hand. “This is the phone number of my friend Tim, here. He’s not affiliated with the Eye, so he’s safer to contact than I am. I really hope we hear from you.”


	119. Chapter 119

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has an awkward conversation.

“ Seems like a long journey for such a short conversation,” Daisy noted as they emerged into the light of the outside world.

“Had to be done. Next move is hers.” She brushed at her coat, trying to shake the feeling that the darkness was somehow clinging to her. She’d thought she’d felt functionally blind simply cut off from the virtual world on their long journey, but that had been nothing to the Dark.

Tim, on the other hand, looked more nervous as they walked towards the sleds. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? I thought you’d be as relieved as me to get out.”

“Why? It seemed pretty safe in there, comparatively. It’s nice to know we aren’t being watched.”

“Being… Tim, are you that afraid of the Watcher?”

“You know I don’t like the spooky truth and all-seeing stuff. We’ve been over this.”

“ You’ve cut up like six things scarier than anything the Institute can do to you by now!”

Tim just shrugged.

“Is this why you won’t move out of the tunnels?”

“Are you asking me to move in with you, Sasha?” He fluttered his eyelashes.

There it was. The joking deflection. He wanted her to drop it. Sasha just rolled her eyes and headed for the sleds.

The sooner they were home, the better.

\----------------

  
  


“ They’re mistranslating that document,” Martin said over the narrator describing  a fragment of Sumerian tablet. “Was a linguist even involved in this project?”

“Probably not one with supernatural translation abilities,” Jon said fondly.

“ Yeah, well, their loss. They should’ve called the Magnus Institute.” Martin didn’t know what he’d expected Jon’s pick for movie night to be, but a random historical documentary on Netflix was… pretty on-brand, actually. He cracked his knuckles and returned his hand half-curled to the space between them, so that Jon could slip his hand in the space and be as close as they could get to holding hands. “Why aren’t we using these powers to advance science and history and stuff. Seems like kind of a waste to just use them to read statements.”

“ You should do that. Offer your services to historians. Of course, it might be tricky to prove that you have supernatural powers.”

“Yeah, don’t know how I’d do that with a ghost around.”  There was a knock on the door. “Ugh, who’s coming by at eleven at night?”  He went to answer it, while Jon ducked out of sight behind the couch in case it was a stranger.

It was the woman who used to visit Jon in hospital. Martin scrambled for a moment to remember her name. “Georgie! Hi.”

“Martin. Glad to see you’re alive. Would’ve been a waste of nearly throwing my back out breaking you out of hospital otherwise.”

“Right. Thanks for the rescue!” replied Martin, who had not been aware that she’d been involved in his rescue. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Sasha, actually, but she’s not answering her door.”

“Oh, she’s at the North Pole right now.”

Georgie stared. “She what?”

“The North Pole. It’s a whole… thing. Um, maybe I can help? Is it an archive thing?”

“It’s a phone thing. You know anything about phones?”

“A… little bit?”

Georgie apparently took that as a ‘yes’ and an invitation inside, because she walked into the flat, pulling hers out of her pocket. “Right, well I got a new one recently. And awhile ago Sasha got me into this great phone game.” She gave him a meaningful look. “It’s called Turtle Run?”

“I know it.”

“Right. I’m kind of addicted, I really don’t like being without it, but it won’t install on my new phone? And she seems to know a lot about it, so – ” Georgie froze, staring over Martin’s shoulder, and dropped her phone. “Jon?!”

“Um, hi, Georgie,” Jon said sheepishly.

“What the fuck?!”

“I, uh, died.”

“I know! I went to your funeral!” She stepped around Martin and strode over to look at Jon up close. “You don’t seem like a, a copy of a specific event or anything, though. You’re responding to me properly, and you’re in this place, which had nothing to do with your death, so… are you all here? Like, Jon?”

“Yes, I’m me,” Jon said testily.

“In that case, I repeat my question. What the fuck? You broached the veil of death, you’re together enough to be you, and you didn’t think to maybe let me know that you’re a fucking ghost now? I mean, I know we haven’t been close in recent years, but  would that really have been so hard?”

“Georgie, I’m sorry; I didn’t thi – wait. Are you just trying to guilt me into coming onto your podcast?”

“Of course you’re going to be on my podcast! You’re a real life ghost, with a pretty table-looking presence and coherent enough to interview!  But also, I would’ve liked some knowledge of your continued existence! And, oh yeah, this ironclad proof of the existence of ghosts. If I were a ghost,  _ I _ would’ve told  _ you _ about it.”

“You’re right,” Jon said drily. “I should call up all of my friends in the paranormal community and submit myself for testing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jon, you don’t have any friends in the paranormal community,” Georgie said, although her tone was joking. “You’re too much of a dick about ‘rigorous scientific standards’.”

“Rigorous scientific standards are important! Also, you’re the one who called me ‘ironclad proof of the existence of ghosts’, tacitly admitting that what most investigators have is too flimsy for that designation even though you know they cast their conclusions as certainties.”

Martin cleared his throat. “Would you like a cup of tea, Georgie?”

Georgie seemed to remember where she was. “Ah… no. It’s very late, sorry to impose. I need to… process this. Have a good night, Martin.” She jabbed a finger at Jon. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“I suppose it isn’t. Goodnight, Georgie.”

After she left, Martin turned to Jon. “So you’re going to go on her podcast, then?”

“If she wants. Although we’d have to be very careful not to imply that she has a ghost-summoning Leitner that any number of things out there might be willing to kill her for. And I doubt my voice would record on her equipment.”

“Ha, yeah. Might get a bit complicated. She seemed happy to see you, at least.”

“Yes.”

\----------------------

  
  


Georgie had never been less happy to see someone in her life.

When she’d broken things off with Jon, all those years ago, it had largely been because she was tired. Tired of trying to shoulder the emotional burden of two people when one wasn’t even trying. When she’d run into him again, working for the Magnus Institute with that Mary thing, she’d known that he, like Melanie, was in a dangerous situation, and it was probably going to end badly. When he’d died, she hadn’t been surprised.

But she certainly hadn’t expected things to get _this_ bad.

She hadn’t expected to ever see one of those dead things again, after the one that had broken her down and almost killed her. She certainly hadn’t expected to see one in the form of her ex-boyfriend. Runing a podcast about ghost encounters was one thing, but Jon standing there, looking at her, talking to her, far more coherent and whole than the vague manifestations in even the most fanciful of the stories she reported on… well.

She’d managed to hold it together. Mostly. She’d managed to keep the conversation casual and, she was pretty sure, hide her outrage.

But she had no idea what to do now.

\----------------------

  
  


Martin stood back and watched as Emory Smith walked into the truckstop. The man’s hands trembled, and tears rolled down his cheeks; he knew what to expect inside. But he had no more control over the nightmare than Martin did.

He had probably dreamed about this before, Martin thought. But probably not for a while, not this intensely. And not with Martin staring at him the whole time, impassively watching his desperation and misery as he pushed his way inside and his sobs turned to screams.

Martin stood back and watched.

\--------------------------

  
  


“I’m ready,” Peter announced outside Elias’ cell.

“Already?”

“Indeed. I really must thank you, you know. For choosing Martin? I was angry at the time, but I really think that you taking him out of my hands was for the best. I’m not sure how easy it would have been to convert him, but Melanie? Melanie was ready to isolate herself! And she already wants to kill you. I’m not foreseeing any difficulty at all.”

“We’ll see. Do you have a pen?”

He did. Elias scrawled out a map detailing the one route through the tunnels that he was always certain of, no matter how they shifted – the way to the Panopticon.

“And the book?”

“Artefact Storage had it, the last I was aware. But you know how they wander.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m sure we’ll find our way regardless. It was good to know you, Elias.”

“See you in the new world, Peter.”

The man gave him a jovial nod, and left.

Elias stared after him. He was right about one thing; things would be much safer for Elias if he’d just let Peter use Martin instead. Elias was starting to think that he may have, in some small way, quite possibly, miscalculated. It was all Jon’s fault, dying so inconveniently, and a Von Closen already marked by a handful of entities was right there… but Elias should’ve taken his bet with Peter into more account. He might actually lose.

And he had a limited amount of time to figure out how to prevent that.


	120. Chapter 120

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter makes his play.

**KingofGhosts has sent you a puzzle!**

Martin didn’t even have to decode the shift. The Eye did it for him.

ITSHAPPENINGPETERISTAKINGMEINTOTHE

  
  


**KingofGhosts has sent you a puzzle!**

TUNNELSTOUSETHEDEVICE

  
  


No further need for subtlety, then. No time to waste with codes; he called Basira, who was at her PI office for the day. Then he called Mary. Jon was at home, and there might not be time to go get him… but Mary said she was near Georgie’s place, since Georgie couldn’t use Turtle Run on her current phone, and see if she wanted to come and help them… do whatever it was they were supposed to do. Martin wasn’t sure whether Melanie was in danger, or whether anyone was, really, but whatever was happening, he wasn’t leaving her to face it without backup.

\--------------------

  
  


Georgie wasn’t expecting a monster at her door as she prepared to go into the office. She blinked at Mary, and tried to think if she had any weapons to hand, just in case. “Can I help you?”

“Peter’s taking Melanie into the tunnels to use some mysterious device that he says might save the world,” she said. “We’re going to find her in case she needs help. Do you want to come?”

So the Extinction thing was happening. This had to be some kind of trap, right? Mary had slid her way into this group of people, was playing them against each other somehow, but… why involve Georgie? She wasn’t involved. There was no reason to trap her. And Melanie might need her help.

“Okay,” Georgie said. “Let me get, um…” did she have anything that could be used as a weapon? Of course not. Who just had weapons? She ran to her kitchen and grabbed a couple of knives. “Okay, let’s go.”

Georgie’s house was within what she’d consider walking distance of the archive crew’s apartment building, but she was pressed to keep up with Mary’s light jog. Apparently monsters didn’t need to worry about things like cramps and light-headedness. Mary noticed she was having trouble, frowned in apparent confusion, and slowed down. “You can’t run?”

“Not forever! Not all of us are… whatever you are!”

“I don’t mean to pry, but… what are you, exactly? I’ve been wondering for a while.”

“What do you mean, what am I? I’m just a person!”

“A human person?”

“Yes!”

“Hmm.” Mary lead the way into the apartment building and unlocked  the basement door. 

“Wait, what did you think I was?”

“Well, probably human. But I wasn’t sure. You are very strange.” Mary led the way down the stairs.

“I’m strange? You’re a… a horror monster preying on humanity, and you think I’m strange?”

“Yes.”

“What’s so strange about me?”

“You’re not afraid of me.”

Oh. That. “You know, if everyone in your life is afraid of you, that should tell you something about yourself.”

“In my experience, humans tend to be afraid of everything all the time. I haven’t met very many powerless humans.” The basement was full mostly of boxes of stuff, pieces of wood, and other general dross. Mary moved aside a couple of thin sheets of wood to reveal a hole hacked in the wall, and a strange tunnel beyond.

“What do you mean power – ?”

“Good, you guys are here.” Basira waved at them from the tunnel. “Let’s go, we have no idea how much time we have.”

“Do we know where we’re going?” Georgie ventured as they headed down the tunnel.

“To meet with Martin halfway,” Basira replied.

“Okay, but how do we fine Melanie? This place is a maze!”

“We’ll figure it out when we get to it.”

“Oh. Well, that’s reassuring.”

\-----------------------

  
  


Elias stared up at the great tower that formed the center of the Panopticon.

In truth, he couldn’t see it – his torch was out, for the moment – but he knew exactly where it was. Where his first body was, the husk that formed his conduit to all the knowledge and abilities he held.

The timing of all of this really was inconvenient, and not just because he might die violently this morning. He’d hoped for the Lonely to be the last thing to mark Martin. Practically speaking, it was simply safer that way – if Martin were killed by a cultist or a  manifestation of some random power, then he could start again, but engineering for someone with the Archivist’s powers of Sight to encounter the Lonely in particular was tricky. It was, by nature, shy, and its servants tended to steer clear of people who could Know them with a particularly hard look. The only practical way that Elias had to mark anybody with it was through the cooperation of a Lukas, thus this rather risky little gamble. But even if this worked, and Martin walked away marked, he still had to encounter the Hunt and the Desolation before he would be ready for the ritual. If he walked out of this place and a Hunter killed him… well, his chances of enticing another Lukas to help with the next Archivist were not high.

Perhaps he should start looking into potential replacements already marked by the Lonely, just in case. If he lived long enough for it to be relevant.

The route Elias had given Peter was safe, and clear, but somewhat roundabout. If there was a chance that Melanie might act on her old desire to kill him, he wanted Martin to have time to get to the Panopticon early enough to possibly talk her out of it. He’d successfully done so before, so conveniently putting Elias in jail instead, where he could hatch his plans in peace and safety.

Elias closed his eyes, searched for his Library, searched for the faint thread that linked his Archivist, and pulled.

\-----------------------

  
  


The approaching torchlight was Martin. “Good, you’ve got everyone.”

“Okay,” Georgie said, but which way – ?”

“This way.”

“How do you – ?”

“I just do.”

“Oh. _Fantastic._ ”

\----------------

  
  


“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Melanie asked, following Peter through the tunnels, their torch beams dancing off the stone ahead of them. “I mean, even with a map, they tunnels tend to change…”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” He tapped his map. “Ink’s practically still wet. There hasn’t been time for anything to happen to throw us too far off track.”

“It’s just I’m pretty sure we’ve walked in a big circle at least three times by now.”

“Yes, yes; one of his little jokes. But in the end it’ll lead – ah, here we are.”

They walked out into a massive underground cavern. Melanie scanned her torch along the walls to reveal stone cells stacked as high as her torch could reach, the walls facing inward made of iron bars so that nothing inside was hidden. Not that much was inside – beds, basins, and remnants of cloth and bone to indicate what must once have been corpses. It was impossible to tell in their current state of decay, but she had the general sense that they hadn’t died peacefully.

“Welcome,” Peter announced dramatically, “to the Panopticon of Millbank Prison!”

Melanie knew what a Panopticon was. She turned to the tower that she knew would stand in the centre. The tower itself was a stone pillar with spiral steps surrounding it; even entering and exiting the tower offered no privacy. The only shielded place in the whole complex was the room on the top of the tower itself, where the guard would sit, able to see into any cell without the prisoners being able to see him. Probably a far more dramatic and impressive setup before the invention of security cameras, which allowed basically the same thing.

“And the device we need?”

“Is in the tower, of course! Come on. And watch your step – this is from an era before safety rails.”

They began to ascend the tower.

“So how does this tower help us, exactly?” Melanie asked.

“Well, from inside the guard tower of the Panopticon, one can see everything.”

“A bunch of skeletons in cells. Fascinating.”

“No, not the cells! I mean, everything. Any place, any time, any one… I’m given to understand that there are limitations, ways to block or hide the Sight, but it should be more than sufficient for our purpose.”

“Which is?”

“To read the specific levels of fear in relation to the Extinction, and determine when and where it’s going to be born and how to stop it. I myself am at a bit of a loss when it comes to something as socially complicated as redirecting the budding fear of the population of a planet. Without this sort of way to gather information, we simply stand no chance.”

“And I have to be the one, because I’m marked by the eye and the Lonely.”

“Exactly!”

“I get how the Eye is involved, but why the Lonely?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No. Or I wouldn’t have asked.”

“Fair enough. Well, once someone is situated in the tower, there’s not really a safe way to remove them. Interaction with the world at large is perfectly possible, but… complicated. It could take years to adequately arrange, I believe. Most people would probably go mad, and that’s not something we can afford; this project could take months, or years, or decades. We need somebody strong enough o do it for that long.”

“There’s no going back from this.”

“No.”

“What’s it going to be like?”

“Safe. Lonely. You’ll be able to watch over everyone and keep them safe, but nobody will disturb you – except me, I suppose. Between the tunnels of this place and your own rather interesting abilities, you can keep everyone away forever, and observe on your own terms. Or walk among them again I suppose, if you find that necessary, but as I said that could take years to arrange. I think you’ll like it in here.” He opened the door.

 _Yeah_ , she thought. _I probably would._

“There’s just one problem,” Peter admitted sheepishly, stepping back so that she could see into the room. “You’ll have to dispose of the previous occupant.”

\------------------------

  
  


Martin found himself trailing his hand along the wall as they walked. They’d gone down several flights of stairs, and he wasn’t happy about being so deep in the tunnels. He couldn’t shake the memory of being buried alive, and he knew that had happened on the highest level, that being near the top was no safety, but… still.

The tunnel walls were littered with old cobwebs, and their feel was somehow comforting. When Martin had been buried, it had been the cobwebs that had saved him, in what had seemed like a lucky coincidence at the time but, in retrospect, probably hadn’t been. The spiders probably wouldn’t save him again – he wasn’t theirs any more – but their presence was comforting nonetheless. Now, he had another guide.

Following the pull of the Knowledge in his mind, he took a sharp turn and headed on toward their destination, whatever that might be.


	121. Chapter 121

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie decides.

In the centre of the tower sat a chair on a rotating mechanism with some kind of viewfinder in front of it, and in that chair there was, indeed, a man. He had to be alive, if only because he hadn’t decayed at all, but if he was breathing, it was too shallowly for Melanie to make out, and he didn’t move as she stepped forward for a closer look. Peter pressed a knife into her hand as she passed. She curled her fingers around it, but it wasn’t her knife. She was used to knives becoming her knife, but it had been so long… this one felt alien in her hand, like a tool separate from herself.

“Who… who is he?” she asked.

“Jonah Magnus!”

Oh, and there was one more strange thing about the man in the chair. “Where are his eyes?”

“Right where they’ve always been,” announced a familiar voice in the doorway. Melanie spun to shine her light on the smug figure of Elias Bouchard.

“Elias,” Peter said testily, “what are you doing here?”

He put his hands up, but still entered the tiny room. “What, a man can’t witness his own death? Don’t worry, Peter, I wouldn’t dream of interfering. Two against one? I couldn’t even if I wanted to.” He glanced, almost expectantly, at the doorway, but there was no one there. Was that worry on his face? Probably. Melanie did have a knife.

“I’ve been wanting to kill you for a long time,” Melanie said.

“Melanie, ignore him,” Peter said. “He’ll try to manipulate you. Let’s get this done.”

“If I kill him in the chair, he will die?”

“Yes.”

“And then we can use the Panopticon to save the world.”

“Indeed.”

Melanie laughed. “Are you serious? All this time, all this buildup, and that was the game? You just wanted me to kill Elias? Peter, I would’ve done that for you without all the bullshit, given half a chance.”

“This isn’t about Elias,” Peter said, sounding urgent. “It’s about the Panopticon. He’s just in the way, and the sooner we rid – ”

“Elias – or Jonah, if you prefer – if I kill you, what happens to those of us working in the archives?”

“Elias,” Peter warned.

“Come now Peter, it’s a fair question. One you should have addressed. The truth, Melanie, is that I don’t know. I may have exaggerated the danger a little, but it is very real. You would be protected by your new allegiance, and Mary was never in any danger. As for the rest… Martin might be strong enough to weather it, it’s difficult to be sure, but Sasha and Basira? Probably not. They’re heavily connected enough to be particularly vulnerable but not, I believe, strong enough in their powers to protect themselves. But then, what do I know? I haven’t gotten a close look at any of you for quite some time.”

“What about the rest of the Institute? People outside the archives? Are they connected to you in the same way?”

Elias laughed. “Oh, come now, Melanie. Don’t pretend you care about any of them.”

“Of course I don’t. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why does it matter if I personally care about someone? What kind of world would we live in if someone’s right to live or die depended on whether whoever had something to gain cared about them?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“Ha, good point. We’d live in this world, I suppose.” She looked at the knife in her hand. “God, I want to kill you so much right now.”

“Then do it. I can’t stop you.”

“I can’t. Too many lives are at risk.”

“Even more are at risk if you don’t!” Peter snapped. “The Extinction is coming. The world – ”

“If this were about stopping the Extinction, you wouldn’t have brought me here. You two would be working on it together. He’s had, what, two hundred years’ practice using this thing? You expect me to believe that bringing in a newbie of unknown skill and zero practice to take it from him would benefit the world? This is just some power play between you and him that I don’t understand, so I’m not going to get involved.”

“What is between me and Elias changes nothing. We need the – ”

“Then you kill him,” Melanie said, holding out the knife.

Peter hesitated. He and Elias exchanged a glance.

“Hmm. I have to do it, for some reason, right? And I have to choose to get in that machine, otherwise you’d just force me instead of spending months trying to convert me. I’ve read enough statements to know how important choice is in these supernatural things, even choices you don’t know you’re making. I don’t know if this is a wager or a Lonely initiation or something to do with using the Panopticon itself, but either way… no, thanks. I’m not getting involved.”

“But… you said how much you wanted to kill him.”

“And if my friends weren’t in danger, I would. But honestly? Elias isn’t worth it. He’s not worth putting any of them at risk. But I still wouldn’t climb into that machine, so I suppose you’d just both lose out then, right?”

“Then you’ll stay trapped here, at the Institute, forever.”

“You’re asking me to stay trapped in that thing forever, so honestly, not a great argument. Anyway, plenty of people survive crappy nine-to-fives without killing their boss. My friends – ”

“They’re not your friends! You tried to kill one of them, another nearly killed you in retaliation – ”

“Defense.”

“ – and you’ve done nothing but push them away for months! Oh, sure, you helped break the Archivist out of hospital, using powers they don’t understand, but do you really think they’re going to forgive you for that? They’ll give you nothing, and you owe them nothing. This is your chance for revenge, Melanie! You can have your revenge on the man who trapped you here, and have all the power you deserve, on your terms!”

“ You’re really bad at villain speeches,” Melanie said, dropping the knife to the floor. “You should take some advice from Elias, he’s got the theatrics down pat. But at this stage, I don’t give a shit about whatever weird high-stakes personal bullshit you two have got going on, so if you’ll excuse me? I still have to do this week’s payroll.”

E lias gave a smug little chuckle. Peter glared at him. Melanie made for the door, but found herself stepping forward not onto stone, but soft grass in a foggy landscape, with a familiar cottage.

\------------------------

  
  


Martin barrelled into the room, with Basira, Melanie and Mary right on his heels. They didn’t exactly all fit in the tiny guard tower, but so long as no one fell off the edges of the steps, he didn’t care. He glanced around – Elias, Peter and, if he’d interpreted the overheard conversation as they’d snuck up the stairs correctly, the creepily immobile body of Jonah Magnus, who was also Elias. Fun thing to unpack later. No Melanie.

“What did you do to her?” he asked Peter, throwing his full power behind the question, but Peter, despite the lack of unblocked exits in the room, somehow managed to flee. Damned Lonely.

“Ah,” Elias said. “Martin. With backup. A little late to play defense squad, but it seems you weren’t needed anyway. How much of that did you overhear?”

“Enough.”

“Good, that’ll save us about five minutes of incessant questions that we really don’t have time for.”

Martin picked up the knife. “I haven’t made up my mind about not killing you, you know.”

“And sacrificing your friends? Do we really have time for this discussion? I thought you were here to help Melanie.”

“Where is she?”

“Peter has cast her into the Lonely. Again.”

“How do we get there?”

“Well, I’d imagine that you’re quite good at Seeing things by now. It wasn’t too long ago; there should be a trail. I’d hurry in and back, though, before it fades.”

“ I’m coming with you,” Georgie said, taking Martin’s right hand after he pocketed the knife.

“Me too, if you can take me,” Mary said, taking his left. “Although it might be impossible.”

Basira took Georgie’s free hand. “Let’s go.”

Martin relaxed. Focused. Thought about where he needed to go, about the path ahead… and stepped forward onto it.

\----------------------

  
  


The cottage was exactly as Melanie had left it, and walking in felt like walking home. She breathed the chill fog and with it, the tingle of fear that now she was lost forever. That she’d never interact with another person, and wasn’t that, in a sense, like being dead?

But this was her home. It was what she’d chosen, really. Oh, sure; she’d me up her mind to escape, in a moment of panic, but once back out in the world, what had she done? Attacked people. Pushed people away. Twisted herself up with a thousand excuses; they didn’t deserve her, she didn’t deserve them, she was a danger to them, they were a danger to her, she had to go along with Peter’s plan to see what it was… all excuses. Jumping on the nearest thing to let her be what she was; a lonely pillar, unable and unwilling to be one of a group. Hadn’t her whole life lead up to this? Somebody who wasn’t her wouldn’t have fought so hard for everything, been so abrasive. Someone who wasn’t her would’ve picked a career that was more socially acceptable. Someone that wasn’t her wouldn’t have become the laughing stock of strangers, cutting off most potential friendships before they could begin. Someone who wasn’t her would have been able to keep Ghost Hunt UK together.

She was safe here. She was alone here. And that scared her, yes, but the other world was full of fears, too, many of them sharper and more powerful and quite confusing. She didn’t have to worry about those any more; she was home.

And she’d finally have time to start that vegetable garden.


	122. Chapter 122

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adventures in the Lonely

Martin stepped through the mist, and found his hands empty. 

Mary didn’t surprise him, but he was a bit puzzled that Georgie was gone. Could he not bring others with him, because it was the Lonely? As he wondered it, he Knew the truth: Georgie couldn’t feel fear of any kind.

Well, that would have been fantastically useful information thirty seconds ago. At least he could’ve held Basira’s hand instead, and had a chance of getting two of them in. Had Basira made it in, just separated from him by the nature of the dimension? Or was she back with the others? That would be a fantastic turn of events, wouldn’t it; save Melanie, only to lose Basira. 

Melanie should be nearby. He’d followed her in. He squinted through the fog, trying to make out any landmarks. It would be just like him to get lost out here, wouldn’t it? No matter what he did, he always seemed to need rescuing. But the one thing he could do, the one thing he was good for, was Seeing, Knowing, Asking information. He should be able to See where she was.

Martin wondered if he would dream, here. If his being here would free his victims from their nightmares, or at least his presence in them. They hadn’t seen him when he was in the Dark, right? And Melanie had survived here for ages without getting sick from being away from the Institute. So maybe the Eye couldn’t reach them here. Maybe all of his victims were free, until he got back. 

Melanie was off to his left somewhere. He altered his course and kept going.

He’d jumped at the chance to get these powers, hadn’t he? To be the one to hurt so many people. Nobody had been close to Martin. Nobody had liked Martin. But they’d gathered together and decided that they should do everything as a team, that they should support each other, and he’d pressed them into making him the Archivist. He’d told himself at the time that he was protecting the rest of them from the burden, but was that really true? Had he been protecting them, or had he been trapping them? 

Not with the contract, of course; he hadn’t known about that. But to their agreement to protect the Archivist. It was sort of like having friends, sort of like having a support network, but he knew that they didn’t really care about him, did they. Or they would have already been close. Nobody needed Martin; they just needed the Archivist. Anyone would have done. It seemed pointless to pretend otherwise, here.

What was that ahead? Martin squinted through the fog. A house?

And then there was Jon. Oh god, Jon. Jon was practically a hostage, someone whose whole existence was chained to the whims of the rest of them, and there was nothing they could do about it. And he’d told Martin he loved him, and Martin had accepted that. Had taken advantage. But of course Jon didn’t really love him; Jon had always despised him, no matter what lies about personal insecurity he made up about it now. Jon only ‘loved’ him when he was forced by circumstance to get to know him, when he was cut off from everyone but their little crew.  If Martin were gone, Jon would probably be relieved.

And Martin didn’t blame him. He’d been in this position before, where someone who despised him had been forced by circumstance to depend on him. For his mother, the choice had been Martin or the home, and he’d never wanted to condemn her to one of those awful places. They’d been trapped together, because he’d been her only option. And after everything, she hated him enough that she still wanted to chance the home, considered it the lesser of two awful fates. That’s how bad a son he was. She’d been so passionate about it that she’d eventually worn down even his stubborn insistence that she deserved better. And then she’d died there.

Jon would do the same, once he stopped falling for Martin’s stupid tricks and remembered how much he despised him. Between Martin and death, Jon would eventually choose death. They both knew this, and yet Martin had still been stringing him along, play-acting, living out his own fantasies from when Jon was still alive and less helpless.

Jon would be relieved, if he was gone.

The others, too, probably. Sasha or Basira would make better Archivists.  They were already doing half his job anyway.

Martin had arrived at the front door of a little cottage.  He knocked. Melanie answered, and fixed him with a puzzled frown. She seemed distracted, and stared at him, like she was trying to remember who he was.

“Martin!” she eventually said. “How can I help you?”

“Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I came to find you.”

“… why?”

“To… to bring you home?”

She looked even more confused at that. “I am home.”

\----------------

  
  


Georgie looked at her own empty hands, then at Mary and Elias, the only other two still in the tower. She had, admittedly, only a shaky grasp on the situation, but she knew who Elias was, from Melanie. If he was also an immortal all-seeing old dude who, apparently, had put his eyeballs in someone else’s body and stolen it, that… wasn’t all that surprising, all things considered.

“Why am I still here?” she asked him.

“A curious question,” Elias said, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Miss Barker, isn’t it?”

“You can’t follow them any more than I can,” Mary said. “You don’t have the fear you need.”

Elias’s stare was uncomfortably hard. He seemed to be dissecting her with his eyes, somehow. “Interesting,” he murmured.

Georgie just glared right back at him. He was the cause of all of this… and he was vulnerable.

She drew a knife, and approached the body in the chair.

“I don’t think so,” Elias said, drawing a gun from somewhere and levelling it at her. 

Mary stepped forward. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“Since she already intends to kill me, you’re not actually giving me a second option with that threat. But I think you’ve both forgotten one important little detail – the fate of your friends. If I die – ”

“They might die,” Mary said. “Or might not. You said yourself, you didn’t know. And most of them are in the Lonely right now; will they still die there?”

“An interesting question. I’m not really sure. But Sasha is most definitely in this world. Will you put her at risk, to kill me?”

“Not unless you force me to protect Georgie.”

“ So you’ll let Miss Barker do it, and lead to Sasha’s death instead. The equation is simple: either we all risk dying here – except you, Mary, I suppose – or we all walk away. I know what my vote is, but of course, it is two against one.”

Georgie hesitated. She pocketed the knife again.  Elias fractionally lowered the gun, but didn’t put it away.

“Are they going to be okay?” she asked. “In there?”

“I don’t know. I cannot see into the Lonely. But I believe that Martin is strong enough, and I very much hope he brings both of them back.”

“You expect me to believe that you care about them?”

“They are very valuable Institute assets.  Who have friends returning from the North Pole who would become extremely unpredictable if they were harmed. So yes, I care very much about what happens to them.”

“ How touching. Sounds like a fantastic work environment.” 

“We should wait outside,” Mary said firmly.

“Why? Afraid I might kill this bastard?”

“Yes.”

\---------------------

  
  


T he man at Melanie’s door (she’d forgotten his name again) looked a bit confused. He seemed to be trying to keep track of a lot of things at once. She was having a difficult time keeping track of things herself; they were probably distracting each other. Things would get easier after he left.

But he didn’t leave. He reached forward and took her hands in his, and the warmth of his skin seemed burning hot compared to the chill air.

“Who are you?” he asked, looking in to her eyes.

“Melanie King,” she answered, immediately.

“Who am I?”

“Martin Blackwood.”

“Why are you here, Melanie King?” 

_ This is my home. It’s where I belong. _ But when Melanie opened her mouth, those weren’t the words that came out. “ Peter Lukas sent me here. I think he was angry that I wouldn’t kill Jonah for him.  Martin, you… you need to go.”

“Why?”

“You’re confusing me! That’s not…” She closed her eyes, and took a deep, shaking breath. “I belong here. I want to stay here.”

“Do you want to stay here?”

“No!” She pulled her hands out of his. “You can’t – it’s not that simple, okay? Everything I tried to do, I… I left this place once, and I told myself I was going to get better, form some proper relationships, and I didn’t. I just pushed everyone away, because I couldn’t be bothered. Because this is who I am.”

“Why did you push everyone away?” Martin asked.

“To protect them. I was dangerous, I attacked you, and then… then I tried to get therapy, and Peter disappeared my therapist, and I was so scared that he’d get rid of anyone I got close to. That you guys were in danger, that Georgie was in danger… I couldn’t risk it. And he kept hinting at this big Grand Plan, and I had to find out what that was, because it could’ve been dangerous. So I became what I had to become.”

“And is Peter Lukas still a danger to anyone you get close to?”

“I don’t… I don’t think so. I mean, his plan failed, right? Maybe, for revenge, but I don’t think he… wants to think about other people long enough to care about things like revenge.”

“Great.” Martin held a hand out. “Then let’s go, while I can still See the way back.”

She looked at his hand. “Why did you come for me?” she asked. “We’re not friends, not really.”

“No. But we should have been. We agreed that we were all in this together, and then we let you isolate yourself. We shouldn’t have given up on you so easily. I’m sorry.”

“What are you talking about? I forced you guys away, and you just  _ wouldn’t give up _ .”

“How about instead of each trying to take the blame for the past, we focus on doing it right in the future?”

“… Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Melanie took his hand.

And the pair of them walked away from the cottage.


	123. Chapter 123

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They look for a way home.

“ So what kind of fear monster are you?” Georgie asked as she lurked awkwardly in a tunnel entrance with a nightmare monster ho probably had sinister plans for her girlfriend.

“What do you mean, what kind?”

“Like, which of the fears are you… made from? I know it’s not the death one.”

“Ah, you mean in Smirke’s taxonomy. They say I’m a Stranger.”

“You don’t know?”

It shrugged. “I don’t fully understand the taxonomy. But I guess that anything that would’ve supported the Unknowing is probably a Stranger, so…”

Georgie didn’t know what that meant, but Stranger made sense, from the short rundown of the fears she’d been given. Something dangerous that wiled its way in with a false face and hurt people. It seemed to have charmed everyone in the archives, at least; Georgie still remembered when Melanie had come over with it, explained it was a nightmare monster but a  _ nice _ nightmare monster, and she needed help hiding it… like that was a reasonable thing to think or do. It hadn’t charmed Georgie, though; maybe because it hadn’t been around her enough. Maybe because she couldn’t feel fear.

Something very much like this thing had stolen her fear. She wouldn’t forget that.

She opened her mouth to ask another question, but Mary cut her off with, “Are you sure you want to talk about this now?”

“Don’t want to answer any questions?”

“Quite the opposite. You obviously don’t trust me. How do you know I won’t try to deceive you, if you think I mean anyone harm?”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Then maybe we should wait until Martin comes back. He can force me to tell the truth and save you the trouble of picking apart my evil web of lies.”

So they waited in tense silence.

\-------------------

  
  


Hands clasped so they wouldn’t lose each other, Melanie followed Martin out into the fog.  He strode forward, confidently at first, then more hesitantly. When he stopped, turned, and took a few halting steps forward, she spoke up.

“Are we lost?”

“No. I think… I think I’ve just been pushing myself recently, and I’m… a bit wor n out. Tired and hungry, I suppose.”

“We can rest.”

“No, I… don’t think it’s a good idea to stop here. If we stop, we might not want to get going again.”

S o they kept going. But the third time that Martin stopped and squinted into the middle distance, Melanie pulled her hand from his. He looked at her in surprise.

“Go,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m holding you back, aren’t I? I don’t have… I mean, I want to be close to people again, I don’t want to be Lonely, but wanting something isn’t the same as having it. Promising to do it later isn’t the same as having it now. Nobody I know out there is even going to put up with me after all this. You can get out fine on your own, you just can’t take me, right? It’s too much. If you keep trying, this place will separate us both eventually, and we’ll be stuck. But you can still get out.”

“Melanie, it’s – ”

“Don’t try to argue. You’re wasting time. Just go.”

“Melanie, you’re not keeping us here. I am.”

“ What?”

“I know you love Georgie. I know you’re fiends with Mary. They love you, too; they came down here to back you up, and they’re waiting for you in the Panopticon. Keep them in your mind, and I’m sure you’ll find them. But it’s better if I don’t come with you.”

“ Martin, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You were here for a long time last time, right? But you didn’t get sick.”

“Right.”

“The Institute’s power can’t reach you here. And I’m the thing tying you to the Institute. If I stay… you can all leave. The Institute doesn’t have to hurt you any more.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” Basira announced from behind them, making both of them jump. “You two were almost impossible to find, by the way. Don’t you know that when you’re lost, you’re supposed to stay in one place and wait for rescue?”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m stuck in a fear dimension,” Melanie said.

“My logic is sound,” Martin said.

Basira just shook her head. “Didn’t we already have this discussion, when we first found out that you were our tie to the institute? You promised not to recklessly endanger yourself to free us.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Because then, you didn’t have a chance to kill Jonah Magnus!  We knew he’d appoint someone as the Archivist, and we were trying to stop an unknown number of apocalypses; there were reasons to stick around. But now, we know most of the rituals have failed, and everyone has ages before they can try again. Maybe all of them. The only one we know to be a real threat at the moment is the Watcher’s Crown – which you can almost definitely derail by killing Jonah. If I stay here, you can all quit, and kill him safely. You’ll be safe. The world will be safe.”

“We don’t know that,” Basira pointed out. “We don’t know anything about any Web, End, Vast or Lonely rituals that might be in the works. We don’t know if Jonah’s a major figure in the Watcher’s Crown; maybe there are others involved, and if we get rid of him, we’ll never find them. We don’t know that it’d be safe to kill him, because he never specified whether the rest of the Institute employees were in danger if he died. We don’t even know that we’re safe; the idea that  you won’t still connect us to the Institute if you’re here is just a guess. Some of us will probably have to die to save the world; I accepted that a long time ago. But I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself on so many maybes.”

“It’s worth the maybes. It’s worth a shot. If it turns out to be for nothing, you can always get yourself a new Archivist; they’d be better at it than me, because we have so much information to go on, now. Whoever you pick will know not to take live statements, for example; they won’t end up ruining anyone’s lives every night – ”

“I don’t give a shit about the Archivist,” Basira said. “I’m not abandoning you. Even if I wanted to, the others would kill me if I did.”

“You’d lose some, some time while the new person adjusted and grew in strength, but – ”

“But we’d still have lost you! Do you really think Sasha and Tim and Mary and me and even Daisy don’t love you? Or what about Jon?”

“Jon thinks he loves me,” Martin said bitterly, “but in his position, anyone would – ”

Basira held up a hand to silence him. “Whatever random relationship you’re about to say sounds like a problem between you and Jon, it’s none of my business. But I can guarantee you it’s wrong. I’ve seen the way that boy looks at you, and vice versa. You’ve got it bad for each other.”

“Um,” Melanie spoke up, “is this a new Jon I don’t know? Because our Jon – ”

“He’s a ghost now, and he’s dating Martin. You missed a lot. Martin, you’re not staying behind.”

“ I have to, Basira. Our best chance to – ”

“Do you know what I missed most about working in the archives?” Melanie asked. “When I was up in that office, thinking about the past. Do you know what I missed the most?”

“What?”

“Tea.”

“Melanie, you could make your own – ”

“Your tea. Not the tea itself. The fact that you could always tell I was stressed out before I could. I knew I’d been on edge when I smelled chamomile in my cup. And how I could tell that Sasha had pulled an all-nighter when you brought her that extra strong high-caffeine stuff, and sometimes the archives would smell fruity or flowery because you’d found some new flavour for Mary to try, and how Basira used to get distracted and leave half-drunk cups everywhere so you bought her an extra small cup that held the right amount for her.  You cared so much about everyone in those archives. Of course they care about you.”

“You don’t.”

“I remember when I did. And I will. Give me time.”

Basira held out her hands. Melanie took one. Martin, after a moment’s hesitation, took the other. And they pressed forward.

“Um,” Melanie said, already feeling like it was a stupid question, “ _ you _ know the way back to the real world, right,  Basira ?”

“Of course I know the way back to the real world.” Basira’s tone made it clear that it was indeed a stupid question. “The real world is whichever one Daisy is in.”

\------------------------

  
  


The tower of the Panopticon must have had some kind of defense mechanism, because when they came out of the Lonely, it was at the base of it, not inside. Just out of curiosity, Basira rushed up the stairs and tried the door; not only was it locked, but touching the handle sent a powerful jolt of electricity through her body. She decided not to investigate further. There was nothing for them inside the tower, anyway.

When she came back down, Georgie and Melanie were having an intense discussion that seemed to involve a not inconsiderable amount of tears and arm touching. She asked Martin the obvious question. “So, can you See the way back out?”

He tried. “Um. No. This might be a prob – ”

“I marked the path!” Mary said cheerfully. “I remembered from a bedtime story, Hansel and Gretel.”

“Great!” Basira grinned. “Let’s follow Mary’s trail of bread crumbs and get home!”

“I didn’t have any bread crumbs on me,” she said regretfully, “or white stones. I wish I’d thought to bring some, but I probably couldn’t carry enough for the long journey, anyway. I had to make a substitution.” She shone her torch on the floor of the tunnel, revealing a path marked with shiny white human teeth.


	124. Chapter 124

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath.

After discovering their boss was the 200-year-old body-hopping founder of the Institute, Martin expected things to be… different, somehow. But they weren’t.  The archive crew couldn’t even find the Panopticon again; the tunnels had changed, breaking up Mary’s trail of teeth.

The police put out alerts and plastered pictures of Elias’ face everywhere, trying to reclaim their lost prisoner, but Martin didn’t think they’d find him. He had too many places to hide, and would be able to see them coming. They had the suspicion that Peter Lukas had abandoned the institute, but it was honestly hard to tell – Melanie already did his work, and he almost never spoke to anyone else, so it was entirely possible that he was still around and just saw no need to talk to her any more. The Institute ticked on as normal either way, although the rest of the archive staff made it a point to drop in on Melanie occasionally, bringing her cups of tea or inviting her out for lunch, and while she usually refused these lunches and got antsy after more than about five minutes of conversation, she was friendly.

Martin himself was tired. He’d pushed himself quite far on the whole Lonely adventure, and afterward, Georgie had wanted his help interrogating Mary about her motives. It had taken over an hour for Georgie to be satisfied that Mary was harmless, or at least believed herself to be harmless, but he didn’t think Georgie would ever completely trust her. The convenience store in his dreams had gone dark and inaccessible, which usually meant that the relevant dreamer wasn’t asleep, but he already knew what it meant for Emory Smith. He’d only had one or two days left.

Mathematically, Martin knew that taking a victim so close to the end of his life was far more ethical than taking someone else. Mathematically, he knew that tormenting someone for a night or two was better than years. But all he could think was that  he’d ruined the last couple of days of an innocent man’s life, and that wasn’t okay. When Basira expressed concern over how he looked and offered to talk to Oliver again, he refused. He wasn’t doing that again. He’d find a better solution, or he’d starve.

Mary told him of her adventures happily enough, but they weren’t any better than the written statements. He wasn’t sure if it was because of what she was, or because she hadn’t found them traumatic. He found that the stories bothered him a lot more than they bothered her, and quickly stopped asking.

He wasn’t sure what exactly made a statement filling. He knew that it had to be supernatural, and he knew what sources were better than others, but that was about it. Was it about the trauma involved? Would two identical statements be nutritionally different if they affected the victim differently – an arachnophobe versus a normal person facing a spider infestation, for example? Obviously, there was no ethical way to experiment; even Basira didn’t suggest trying to find one. Although she did get somewhat fixated on the supernatural thing.

“Why does it matter if it’s supernatural?” she wondered aloud one day in the archives, typing up a statement. The process of building the database had slowed a lot since Mary had quit, but fortunately more than three quarters of the supernatural statements had already been logged.

“Mmm?” Martin asked, nursing a headache and trying to decide whether a statement about an endless staircase or a bleeding wall would make a better breakfast.

“The statements. For you, and for recording. I talked to Melanie about this a while ago – did you know she recorded her Sarah Baldwin story at home, ages ago, in case she wanted to use it for Ghost Hunt UK? And it recorded fine digitally. But here, it obviously didn’t. And when you record anything for the express purpose of sending it to the Institute, it doesn’t. But the Eye eats fear, right? Like all the entities. Why does it matter if the statement is supernatural? And you’re the same. Tons of traumatic stuff happens that’s perfectly mundane, but you see the supernatural encounters in people and feed on them. We could try feeding you a live mundane event and – ”

“No.”

“I guess not. Wouldn’t tell us much anyway, probably; there’s a ton of non-supernatural but very traumatic statements in this archive and they don’t feed you. There’s no reason for it to matter to the Eye whether something’s supernatural or not, so why does it matter to the Institute? Why does it matter to the Archivist?”

Martin shrugged. “Probably some weirdness that Jonah built in. He used a paranormal research institute as a cover for this place; maybe he was genuinely interested in that?”

“Hmm. Maybe. A lot about this place doesn’t… fit… with what I’d expect from the Eye, but then there’s not actually all that much about the fourteen fears in the library. Maybe I’m misunderstanding them.”

Another thing Martin did was talk to Jon about their relationship. He described his concerns about Jon’s position, and Jon just stared at him, looking baffled.

“Let me get this straight,” Jon said. “You think I have Stockholm syndrome?”

“Stockholm syndrome isn’t real,” Martin said. “But… yes.”

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”

“It can’t be the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.”

“It’s the dumbest thing you’ve said since I died, at least.” Jon curled his hand around Martin’s, so it looked like they were holding hands. “Of course I love you.”

“You only got to know me because you had to spend time with me,” Martin protested. “Because of the – ”

“Martin, that’s how I get to know anyone. That’s how most people get to know most people. Contrary to what those cartoon horses say, friendship is not, in fact, magic. You spend time with people in the same workplace or classroom or yoga class or whatever and you get to know each other, and you either like each other or you don’t. Sometimes you start out liking each other and grow to hate each other. Sometimes you start out disliking each other and grow to love each other. I’m with you because I want to be; if I didn’t want to be, someone else could easily take me, or hang me back up in the office.”

“ Yeah. Yeah, I know. But even then, maybe you’re subconsciously worried it would be awkward to – ”

Jon laughed. “Jesus Christ, Martin. What does someone have to do to convince you that you’re worthy of love?”

“Me? What about you? Mr Overcompensating Gruff Academic. I guess we’ll just have to see which of us manages to convince the other one first.”

Jon chuckled again. “I suppose we will,” he said, giving Martin’s hand a little squeeze.

And Martin couldn’t help it. He burst into tears.

\---------------------

  
  


Jon was confused as hell. They’d been having a perfectly fine conversation… had he said something wrong? Done something wrong? Martin probably had all kinds of trauma he hadn’t told Jon about; had Jon brought up something? Or just offended him in some way?

“Martin! Are you alright? I’m sorry, I – ”

“I’m fine,” Martin insisted. “I’m perfectly fine. It’s all fine.” He smiled reassuringly through his tears. “Um. What movie were we watching tonight?”

\---------------------

  
  


Martin was perfectly fine. Except that if convincing the other person that they were worthy of love was a competition, then he’d already lost.

The thing about Jon was that he couldn’t pick up cups, or use pens, or anything like that. But he could walk on the floor or sit on a couch perfectly fine without sinking through it.  It seemed that Jon’s world was divided into the solid boundaries of the world itself, and object in the world; the first which could constrain him, and the second which he couldn’t interact with. The difference had to be psychological, and even Basira hadn’t wanted to do any tests in case they messed up whatever subconscious referencing system he was using and he started sinking through floors or something. But it was something they’d all gotten used to; Jon would sit in chairs and lean on tables, but sink through little stools or end tables. A wall would block him, but the movable partition that held the office fears concept map wouldn’t. He moved, of course, through people.

And he had just squeezed Martin’s hand.

It hadn’t been much of a squeeze. Martin was pretty sure he hadn’t known he’d done it, and didn’t want to tell him, in case that stopped it from working. But for a moment at least, Martin had been solid to him. Proof, so far as Martin was concerned, that to Jon, Martin was an unmovable piece of the universe rather than an object in it. There was no chance at deception, no polite little lies, no pretend ‘I love you’s, because it was something beyond Jon’s notice or control. It was  as close as he could get to proof of Jon’s regard for him.

And now he couldn’t stop making an idiot of himself by crying about it.

\----------------------

  
  


Melanie was living with Georgie again. Some nights she stayed in Georgie’s room, some nights she shut herself in the spare room, and Georgie didn’t make a fuss over it. She found another therapist one who didn’t mysteriously vanish, and told her as much as she could about her problems without seeming delusional, and got some good advice.

“You know what this world needs?” Georgie asked one morning, pushing a cup of tea into Melanie’s hands. “Therapists who specialise in supernatural stuff. Who, who know about the fears and everything, and who can understand and believe stories like yours, and be more useful. Of all the people who survive encounters, some of them have to be therapists, right? Seems like an untapped market.”

“Maybe there’s a whole secret network of supernatural problem therapists, but we don’t know about it because they can’t advertise through normal channels without losing their credibility,” Melanie replied, staring out the window at Georgie’s – their – rather barren backyard, and remembering her cottage. “Hey, what do you think of getting a vegetable garden?”

“Do you know anything about gardening?”

“It can’t be too hard. We could just google  any problems.”

“You want to go plant shopping on the weekend?”

“Yeah.”

“You can handle the shops?”

“I think so.” Melanie sipped her tea. “Sorry, you were saying about therapists.”

“Right. We’re not therapists, but I think we can help people, too.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ve… I’ve been thinking about retiring What The Ghost for awhile. I mean it’s… it kind of loses its thrill when you know more about how things actually work, right? The sightings of half-shaded spectres on key locations, it’s like… okay, minor End manifestation, whatever. And my ex-boyfriend is a way more solid and coherent ghost than anything that made it on the podcast, anyway.  I’ve been thinking of interviewing him for it, but I don’t… know how it would fit? Exactly? ‘Trust me, listeners, there’s an actual ghost sitting in my studio’?”

“Yeah, it might be a hard sell.”

“For the tone of that podcast. But how about a more practical one? One that covers all kinds of supernatural encounters, that interviews people who have had them and talks about them. We wouldn’t be overt about the fourteen fears thing; it doesn’t sound… credible… on its own. But we could be subtle with it. Give people the knowledge they need to survive. What do you think?”

“What are you suggesting, exactly?”

Georgie produced a satin ring box. She cracked it open to reveal a clip-on microphone; not exactly podcast quality, but Melanie supposed that she wouldn’t be able to fit a proper microphone in a ring box.

“Melanie King, will you start a podcast with me?”


	125. Chapter 125

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin faces consequences.

The day that the North Pole crew came back into phone network range, they called the archives and the two groups updated each other on everything that had gone on. Martin thought he’d covered everything, but he must have missed a lot out, because Basira proceeded to lock herself in his office to talk to Daisy for three and a half hours. She talked to her a further two hours the next day, and Martin was grateful when the crew finally got back to London the day after that so that he could have his office back.

Having Sasha back was especially a relief. Between her and Basira and, when she ventured down from her office, Melanie, they could arrange things so that someone apart from Martin was in the archives during all business hours, which meant that he could stagger his sleep cycle again to do as little nightmare watching as possible. The dreams of Eleanor, the first person he’d taken a statement from, had greyed out like Emory’s; this wasn’t surprising. She had been old.

Now it was just Tim and Colleen to avoid. Martin cornered Tim one afternoon as he climbed up through the trapdoor in Martin’s floor to use his oven.

“I want to ask you about the nightmares,” he said.

Tim hesitated. “What about them?”

“I just want to know what they’re like. From your side.”

Tim shrugged. “I mean, they’re bad dreams, right? So what?”

“Tim. Please. This… it’s something I need to know.”

Tim hesitated. “They’re nightmares,” he eventually said. “I’d be having them anyway, although probably not every night, I guess. I mean, they can’t hurt me, so…” he shrugged again. “Except for the part where they make me not want to sleep, I guess. Sleep deprivation is bad for you, I’m told.”

“And when I’m in them, I want to know what that’s like.”

“Creepy, but fine. Seriously, Martin, the nightmares aren’t a problem.”

Martin opened his mouth to push further, but he didn’t have to. Tim continued.

“It’s everything else that’s the problem.”

“What do you me – I mean, I didn’t know there was an ‘everything else’.”

“It’s like… the things I dream about, they’re… you kind of get mental scar tissue, right? Over the fucked up stuff that happens in life? Even if the wound is always there, like with Danny, it… scabs over. But the dreams make it hard to do that; they’re reminding me every night. And I know that’ll keep happening, forever, so it’s like… there’s not really any point in forgetting for the day, is there? And then there’s the… watching thing.”

“The watching thing.”

“Yeah. You’d think the Watcher wouldn’t be as scary as some of the other powers, right? But it’s… hmm. After… after Danny… I found myself getting really anxious quite a lot. Sometimes I’d freak out for a bit, and I didn’t always know why. It took me a while to start finding the things that caused it – particular strains of music, or walking through certain designs of doorway; things that I guess reminded me of the even, in some way? Someone would wear the wrong combination of red and green that perfectly matched a mannequin I thought might kill me, and I’d just be keyed up and antsy all day, probably without figuring out why until mid-afternoon. And those things faded, over time. I desensitised myself to them, on purpose. Told myself I needed to be stronger, do avenge Danny. But the, the modern nightmares… they’re tied up with you standing there, watching everything, dissecting everything. Whenever you look at me, part of my brain is like, ‘hey, know what this is just like?’ Whenever I think a stranger is staring at me on the bus, part of my brain is like, ‘oh yeah, this is the bit where you catch fire’. Whenever I’m near that fucking Institute, or even just thinking about how that bastard can see me anywhere – ”

“This is why you won’t move out of the tunnels,” Martin realised.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tim lied. “It’s just, y’know, I’d rather avoid the anxiety when I can. No point in feeling it if I don’t have to, right? So. Tunnels.”

“Thanks for telling me, Tim. I – oh, god. Is telling me personal stuff freaking you out? I – ”

“It’s fine. I chose to answer.”

“I’m sorry about all this.”

“I chose to give that statement, too. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know. I’m still sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Tim wasn’t looking at him. “There’s probably one more thing you should know. It mightn’t be important, but it might, so…”

“I’m listening.”

“Since you woke up from that coma, you… you look a lot more like him. Almost exactly like him.”

“Like who?”

“The you in the dreams. It used to be easy to tell you apart, the way he’d stare, but… you look at things like that in the waking world too, now. Thought maybe you should know that.”

\-----------------------------

  
  


It was only a matter of time, Sasha supposed, before something like this happened.

The woman entering the archives to give a statement looked vaguely familiar, and when she said her statemetn was about ‘the person in charge of her apartment building’, Sasha realised why. She’d seen her entering or leaving the building occasionally. Apparently, Mary fixing her air conditioner had been unsettling enough to come in and make a statement.

She didn’t seem to recognise Sasha, but if more of their neighbours came in, this might become a problem. It was only a matter of time before Mary’s victims, who presumably talked to each other about her, realised that the people they went to tell their stories to at the Magnus Institute were their downstairs neighbours. Hell, Sasha was Mary’s roommate. If residents of the building came in often enough, someone was going to notice.

That wasn’t dangerous, necessarily. But it could get super awkward.

\--------------------

  
  


“Wow, that sounds rough. Thanks for sending in that story, Natalie. Remember, it’s always a good idea to seek psychological help after an experience as traumatic as that. What do you think, Melanie? Pretty brave escape, huh?”

“Honestly, Georgie, I think it was the love of her children that pulled her through. In situations like this, I think real, human connection is your greatest weapon, and nothing’s stronger than a parent’s love.”

“Oh, absolutely. The second best way to get out of these isolating situations where something’s trying to make you feel alone forever, is to focus on the people who love you.”

“What’s the first best, then?”

“Avoid getting into them, if you can. It’s not always possible, like in Natalie’s story here, but if you can say ‘no thank you’, do it. Don’t investigate the weird door you see on your way home that you didn’t notice the previous hundred times, don’t open the suspicious box that smells of blood, don’t keep using the mirror that makes you feel like your reflection is always watching you no matter where you look. If you can walk away, walk away.”

“Good point. Sometimes you’re out of luck, but more often than you’d think, there’s a choice to not get involved if you look hard enough.”

“I didn’t expect agreement from a ghost hunter.”

“Former ghost hunter. And I should’ve quit long before I did. I have more than enough scars from that line of work, thank you very much. Not to mention the unflattering video footage.”

“To be fair, you had just been cut up by a ghost.”

“And isn’t producing content for stupid memes what life is really about?”

“Well said, Melanie. Time for a music break. This comes to you from my teenage cousin’s shitty garage band, who slipped me five pounds to play it for you guys. If you have poor enough taste as to actually like it, there’s a link to their album in the video description. Please support them so they bribe us more. This is My Mum Is A Capitalist Pawn by Anybody’s Game.”

\-------------------------------

  
  


Martin needed groceries.

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure whether he needed groceries. He had no idea whether he needed real human food any more, as well as statements. He hadn’t wanted to stop eating and find out… in case he didn’t.

Maybe that in itself was a sign he wasn’t too far gone. There were things he didn’t want to know.

So he headed out to the supermarket. He walked slowly, so that one of his myriad self-appointed guardians would have time to get ready and follow him at a distance to make sure he wasn’t kidnapped and didn’t eat anyone’s trauma. He preferred not to see who it was. He liked to at least pretend he could be alone. He knew why they crowded him; he got it. It was dangerous for him to go alone. He had to accept this.

Martin was so lost in thought that he almost walked straight into someone. He looked up to apologise, right into the eyes of a barista he knew far too well.

Colleen went pale and her eyes widened in fear. And then narrowed.

Martin was completely unprepared for the punch to his gut that dropped him to his knees.

“Don’t hurt her!” he managed to gasp as Daisy appeared from nowhere and pulled Colleen’s arms into a hold that made her shout in pain.

“Who are you, then?” Daisy growled. “People’s Church?”

“Daisy, please, let her go. Don’t hurt her.”

“She hit you.”

Martin struggled to his feet. “I deserved it.”

“What did – ?”

“She’s not with one of the cults or anything. She’s… she’s a barista at a cafe near the hospital.”

Understanding dawned on Daisy’s face. “She’s the one you attacked after – ”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” Daisy released Colleen, and Colleen immediately backed away from her. Martin put himself between the two, hands raised.

“I understand that you’re upset – ”

Colleen hit him again.

“Hey!” Daisy protested, but didn’t move to stop her. Colleen didn’t even seem to hear her.

“What do you want with me?!” she shrieked. “Everywhere I look, it’s like you’re there! In my fucking dreams, even! What did you do to me? Why me? Why?!”

“You really want to know?” Martin asked the pavement, wondering whether he should risk getting up a second time. She might hit him again if he did… but then, she might kick him if he didn’t. He got up.

“Yes!”

“Fine. There is no reason.”

“I don’t… what?”

“When I found you that day, I wasn’t… entirely in control.” A lie, he knew. He’d been hungry, tired, and prioritised accordingly, but that wasn’t an excuse. Nobody had made him do it. “You were there. You had a story, and I needed one. That’s all.”

“You’ve been stalking me.”

“No, I haven’t. The… symptoms… aren’t in my control. I can’t avoid the dreams any more than you can, and this is the first time I’ve seen you since that day in the waking world.”

Colleen stepped back. “What _are_ you?” she asked.

“My name’s Martin. I’m… I’m the Archivist. I don’t mean you any harm, really. I’m sorry about… about everything.”

“And you?” she asked Daisy, backing away further.

Daisy didn’t answer, so Martin did for her. “She’s a friend. She thought you might be trying to kill or kidnap me.”

“Why would – ?”

“You don’t want to know,” Daisy said sharply.

“Yeah. I probably don’t.” Colleen turned and strode – well, more like ran – away.

Daisy watched her leave. “Do we need to be worried about her?”

“No,” Martin said, “I don’t think you do.” _But I do. I’ll keep seeing her, in my dreams._


	126. Chapter 126

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's been a lot of trauma in this series so it's time for a party.

They were watching a documentary on the Ghana Empire when it happened.

“Martin,” Jon said. He didn’t have to say anything else.

Martin sighed. “It’s time, is it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We… we had a second chance, and I don’t regret it.” He squeezed Jon’s hand a little, gratified to find that this was one of the rare moments where it felt solid. “So, how do you want… um… and when? I mean, you should say goodbye to everyone before we… you know.”

“Before you burn me,” Jon said, apparently deciding not to be coy about it.

“Yeah.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s true. We should call – ”

“How about a wake?”

“What?”

“A wake. I’m sure you don’t want to have the same discussion with everyone individually where they try to convince you that you’re wrong and should stick around. That’s just way too many conversations that are going to be awkward on both sides. So we invite everyone over, make it a celebration, and do it all at once. It’ll be clearer that it’s not something you’re sad about, and nobody else should be either, and we can do all the heartfelt goodbyes and everyone can be there for each other. And Tim can make fun of my attempts to cook food, which is one of his favourite things to do.”

“… A wake. Hmm, that could work. I don’t think it’s exactly traditional to go to one’s own wake, but – ”

“But it’s not traditional to come back as a ghost due to an evil magic book, either.”

“Heh. True enough.”

And so they organised a wake.

They decided to hold it in Martin’s apartment, which turned out to be a mistake since everybody wanted to contribute something, so the small space was full to bursting with food and various other things. Martin provided an ungodly amount of alcohol, Sasha brought her “good coffee machine”, which turned out to be a setup the size of a small desk, although when Martin pointed this out she defended herself by saying that the coffee machine was actually quite small and that was just the extensive collection of different coffees, as well as Mary’s still-growing tea collection (which even Martin considered excessive). Basira and Daisy brought roast turkey and beef, and a large cake. Georgie and Melanie brought a selection of salads, and a large cake shaped like a gravestone. Tim made an excessive amount of tapas and other finger foods, and a large mess of fondant and icing that presumably, somewhere, contained a cake.

And a suspicious box.

“Tim,” Jon asked suspiciously as he opened it, “is that what I think it is?”

“That depends. Do you thing it’s a portable disco ball?”

“Where are you even going to hang – ”

“Mary drilled a hole for the hook in the ceiling yesterday while Martin was at work.”

“It’s important to keep on top of building maintenance,” Mary said solemnly.

“Did you steal it?” Jon asked.

“Pfft, I rented it. Where would I keep it? The massive network of secret tunnels underneath us?”

“Yes!”

“Well, now it sounds like you’re encouraging me to steal. You’re a bad influence, Ghost of Monsterboss.”

“Show some respect for the dead, Tim, or I’ll tell your big sister,” Jon replied, nodding at Daisy.

“Tim’s never respected anyone or anything in his life,” Sasha pointed out. “He’s not about to start now.”

“Not true! I respect you, Sasha.”

“Flirt with me and I’ll use my powers to discover your girlfriend’s phone number and tell her about it.”

Martin mostly kept out of people’s way for the wake. They’d organised things to that they’d do the wake tonight, and he’d burn Jon’s page the next night, giving them a full day together after everyone else had gotten their goodbyes out of the way. Jon moved from conversation to conversation, and while he and Georgie retired to a different room to reminisce at length about their college days, Martin found himself awkwardly eating tapas next to Melanie.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Not too crowded?”

“Better than being alone.”

“Right.” He nibbled tapas.

“I don’t know if I ever apologised,” Melanie said. “For the stabbing.”

Martin shrugged. “It’s fine. I’d mostly forgotten about it.”

She gave him a withering look that told him she knew him for the liar he was.

“I mean, there’s… a lot has happened. And it was understandable, in the circumstances.”

“That doesn’t make it _okay_.”

“And you helped save me from the coma, so… even, I guess?”

“You saved me from the Lonely.”

“Basira saved us both from the Lonely.”

They ate some more tapas.

“I listened to your new podcast, with Georgie.”

“Oh? What did you think?”

“It’s… a very different tone, right? Less, um…”

“Serious?”

“Yeah.”

Melanie shrugged. “Me and Georgie talked it over and decided that there was no way the subject matter was going to be taken seriously. I mean, when I started going off-trail with ghost hunting, it became clear really fast that the community’s a bit… insular, in terms of what they will and won’t believe. The whole teen-and-creepypasta-fan target seemed more viable. We can catalogue events into Smirke’s Fourteen and tell our colleagues about them as much as we want and get nowhere, but even if kids are out there scanning for Leitner bookplates and avoiding weird doors as a joke, they’re still scanning for Leitner bookplates and avoiding weird doors. And when they do slip up and it becomes all too real, they’ll know that people have survived. They’ll have tips on how to do it.”

“And then they’ll write to you about it, and you’ll have to have some awkward conversations.”

She shrugged. “Then we’ll tell their story, too. And most of our listeners will think that’s part of the mythos, part of the joke, but for the others who experienced something and spoke to us… they’ll have a community. Maybe get some goddamned help, if we get some doctors or therapists or something in there; at the very least, some friends they can be honest with. That’s the big advantage fear has over us, I think. Almost all of these victims are out there suffering alone. Or in narrow communities where they can’t trust the people with control over them. We can solve a lot of the problem with some well-placed advice, and a way to let them find and help each other.”

“And it’s a chance to popularise Georgie’s cousin’s band.”

“Oh yeah, those guys are truly terrible. Reverse Grifter’s Bone. Instead of music so good you want to kill a man, it’s garbage that makes you never want to move again.”

“Hmm. Might be an eldritch application for that.”

Eventually, Sasha gathered them all together. “Speeches! Time for speeches! Jon, do a speech!”

He crossed his arms. “I most certainly did not prepare a speech.”

“Wing it! Come on, I’m sure you’re a great toastmaster.”

“No.”

“It’s your wake!”

“I am certain that it is not remotely traditional to give speeches at one’s own wake.”

“Fine,” Tim said, pouring himself a glass of wine and handing the bottle to Sasha, who got to work pouring toasting drinks. “We’ll do speeches then. Monsterboss, you were a good friend and a complete arsehat. I’ll never forget your dry sense of humour, the camaraderie in Research when we were both staying way too late working and the janitorial staff kept shooting us dirty looks as they tried to get their work done around us, and that time you went completely off the deep end and suspected us all of murder. You were the first person I killed, along with all of those evil clowns and suchlike, and if any of my victims were going to come back from the dead, I’m glad it was you. To Jon!”

“With the coma, I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say that you ki – ”

“To Jon!” everyone cheered, and sipped their various drinks.

Martin smiled quietly to himself. He didn’t want to lose Jon again. He didn’t. But it was Jon’s choice, and this… this was about as good as it could go.

\----------------------------------

It took a long time to be born.

Or maybe it had been born many decades ago, with the oldest of the corpses that now fuelled it. Or maybe it had been born in that fiery explosion, and merely slumbered until it was ready. Or maybe it was being born, right now, as it – she – realised who she was, carved herself from the ashes of a ruined past.

She had a heart of gold. A small, melted bead, that had once been a locket protecting a lock of hair long since burned away. She had flesh of what had once been wax, before intense heat and pressure turned it to charred slag, and the most complicated part of her birth was deciding which wax was hers and which was her friends, her family, her world, destroyed around her and now holding her down. She carefully made her decisions and peeled away that which was not her to reveal arms, legs, a face.

Were her judgements accurate? Was this what she used to look like? It didn’t matter. No part of her world was left, now. Nobody important to recognise her, or fail to recognise her… they were all dead.

She knew who she was. Her name was Jude Perry, and she was a woman who had been betrayed and lost everything. She pushed her way through burned slag, through the charred remains of the collapsed house, and stepped out into the forest.

Stalks of dewey grass froze under her feet. Waves of hopelessness cured around her like fog. She could see, now, that her cult had been like children; a necessary first step in her transformation, not the last. To be caught up in the joy of the gathering, of the burning, were they celebrating the loss of the fire or merely its light? The chaos of the flame was not the point, it had never been the point; it had been something pretty that distracted them, and their distraction had done Agnes, her Agnes, a disservice. They had made her wrong. That was why she could never have succeeded; it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t even the fault of that man from the shop. They had simply made her unfit for purpose, for what would a child of the flame do with a world once it was burned?

And now she was gone, and everyone was gone, fuelling the yawning pit of nothing inside Jude. The true depths of dread and fear were not found in the heat of the flame consuming all that one found dear; they were found in the cold ash left behind. That everything they had would be gone, and nothing could be done. A fear that lived in the heart of anybody who had anything, who had any kind of hope. The fear of becoming Jude Perry.

Odd, in its way, that after all of the plans and preparation of her people, it had been that outsider who has wormed his way into their group and done the job properly. Perhaps she hadn’t really been joking about his ‘three minutes of divinity’; he had been a vessel for something. He had made her in a ritual that concentrated all of the power of the most devoted of their group, all of the love and memory of Agnes and of each other, into one space, and sacrificed them in fire. He had taken away everything that she had loved and everything that had made her whole.

She should return the favour.

Jude Perry stepped forward into the forest, the leaves around her freezing and curling up black with the chill of Desolation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awhile ago I asked some of you if Jude Perry should live or die and you voted live. Don't say I never give you anything.


	127. Chapter 127

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is happy and has a party.

Daisy spoke next. “Jon. The first time we met, I was helping Basira rescue you from evil clowns who wanted to use your skin to end the world. You seemed harmless at the time, and I admit I may have… overreacted a little, when you started haunting my nightmares with your big staring eyes that see every truth and from which nothing can be hidden, but in my defence you and your archive staff were acting very much like a terrorist cell. Still. I regretted that I never apologised for cutting up your mouth and neck that one time, so… I’m sorry about that. You made the ultimate sacrifice to save our world and died a hero, and for that you have my unending gratitude and respect, even if you were a grouchy weirdo. To the hero!”

They toasted that, too, and Martin did a head count of how many toasts there would probably be and switched to drinking fruit juice.

“Jon,” Mary began. “Thank you for being such a good friend. You accepted me into the archives easily, and were always so nice and understanding, teaching me about when it was and wasn’t appropriate to break into hospitals and police stations. I always appreciated how you never plotted to kill me and never locked me in any safes, and the challenge of trying to keep you alive taught me so much more about myself and about humans than I ever thought possible. I wouldn’t be who I am today without you, and I also wouldn’t know how many days a diet of coffee can keep a human conscious enough to read, because the textbooks apparently all lied about that. I never got a chance to really say goodbye to you before you died; I was tricked into the safe before you guys left to deal with the apocalypse. When you and Tim didn’t come back, it was… the first time I’d really lost someone, because it was the first time I’d had someone to lose. And I’m so very happy that we got a second chance with both of you. I wish it was longer for you – I’m sure we all do – but I’m also happy that you get to leave this world on your own terms. Jon, thanks for being my friend. To friendship!”

“To friendship!”

Basira stepped forward next. “Jon. Even when you were a murder suspect, I always liked you. I always appreciated how funny you were, and your straightforward way of talking. I’ve never had much truck with flattery, and you definitely never offered anybody anything at all close to flattery. The dream thing wasn’t cool, but then it did help us save your life, so whatever. You being in this world, alive and then dead, made it a better place, and I’m glad we got to know each other. To good times!”

“To good times!”

Sasha spoke up. “Jon, we didn’t really get to know each other until you became Head Archivist, which means that most of our acquaintance has involved me stopping things from trying to kill you and eventually failing. But even though you put forth your best effort to appear like an unsocial grump, you’ve always been a fun guy in those brief moments when some fear monster isn’t attacking, and that’s only come out more since you actually died. Despite all of your work to show the contrary, I’m always going to remember you as a fun and gentle guy, deep down. You also had an admirable work ethic, no matter what anyone says about healthy sleep schedules; you never knew shit about archiving but you worked damn hard and you put your all into the actual job you were secretly hired for. The world will be a darker and less chaotic place without you in it.” She rose her glass. “To Jon’s good nature!”

“To Jon’s good nature!”

Melanie’s turn. “Jon, when we met I thought you were an arsehole. You talked nonstop shit about my youtube, but then I was talking shit about your Institute, so it probably evened out. Although your Institute did turn out to be evil, so, yknow. Anyway, you turned out to be a pretty standup guy in the time we actually had together, and – this is gonna sound a bit soppy, but – quite a lot of the time when we were in the same room, I didn’t have to suppress an urge to eviscerate you with a deconstructed stapler at all, which was nice. So, y’know. It sucks that you died. And it sucks that you want to die again now, but I’ve been told I’m not allowed to try to talk you out of it, so… I hope it was a good life.” She raised her glass. “To a good life!”

“To a good life!”

Georgie stepped forward. “Jon. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs. But on the whole, I’m very glad I got to know you, and that we got to be in each others’ lives. You’re always going to be someone very special to me. Even at your most emotionally dense, you usually wanted to do the right thing, and that’s… pretty rare. And here and now… I know it’s hard for you to be here. I can see the pain in your eyes. I’m happy for you, and that you can get some rest.” She smiled. “Rest in peace, Jon.”

Everyone looked at Martin. Martin blushed.

“Jon, everything I have to say, you already know. Or I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

That got some good-natured boos, and chants for “speech!”, but when it became clear that Martin wasn’t going to give in, they turned instead to Jon.

“Come on, Jon! Everyone else did a speech! You should do one!”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He stepped forward. “Thank you all for coming. You made my life and death richer, and I love every one of you.”

He stepped back.

“Call that a speech, Monsterboss? Come on!”

“Hey, we got two whole sentences out of him. For Jon, that’s a heartrending monologue.”

“Somebody give him a damn tape recorder and he’ll rant for like twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, but only about spooky shit.”

“If speeches are done,” Tim announced, “there is another thing that we must do with Jon before his final demise.” He reached under the table for a box that he had, apparently, hidden under there earlier.

“Tim?” Jon asked suspiciously. “What is that?”

“A few years ago, Jon made me a promise. A sacred pact. When I asked him to partake in the ancient and noble art of karaoke, he looked right into my eyes and swore, ‘over my dead body, Tim’.”

“Tim, don’t you – ”

“And now, the time to fulfil that promise is upon us!” Tim withdrew the karaoke machine, handing the cord to Sasha, who went to plug it in. “We have waited long for this day, but a promise is a promise! Martin, if you would hold the good man’s microphone for him?”

Martin took the microphone. Jon shot him a look of surprised betrayal.

“Sasha, the disco ball, if you please!”

“Tim, I swear – ”

“Don’t worry, Monsterboss. I made sure to pick a song that you know all the words to.” He hit a button.

And Caramelldansen started blasting through the apartment at high volume.

\-------------------------------

  
  


Tobias had put up with a lot since moving into the apartment complex. Leaky pipes, poor maintenance, a sudden change of management and unsettlingly efficient maintenance. That time hat all of his mail ended up in his neighbour’s mailbox for about three months and nobody could figure out why it couldn’t be delivered to him. But the flat directly below him having an extremely loud party late into the night was new. He should… well, maybe not call the cops. But call the residential manager. No; he’d… rather not talk to her, if he didn’t have to. He’d talk to the flat owner, politely ask them to tone things down. And threaten to call the residential manager if they didn’t. Make her the partygoers’ problem.

He trudged downstairs and scowled at the bright lights flashing in rainbow patterns around the door while some raucous Swedish song played at an obscene volume. The singer was terrible… wait, he’d heard this song before, and the singer didn’t sound like that. This was _karaoke_.

Probably all indecently drunk, too.

He hammered on the door. After a moment, when there was no response, he hammered louder.

The man who answered the door didn’t look how he expected. He was about thirty, for one thing; far too old for this nonsense. And very tired-looking. He met Tobias’ eyes, and Tobias had the distinct sensation that the man was looking directly into his soul, dissecting and analysing him piece by piece, and finding him wanting.

“How can I help you, Mr Gardner?” the man asked. Tobias was certain he hadn’t told the man his surname.

“Ah. Could you turn the music down, please? It is a weeknight,” he managed to say, in what he was sure counted as a firm tone, given the circumstances.

“Of course! So sorry, we weren’t thinking.”

“Right! Because, because if you don’t, I’ll have to call the resid – ”

“Mr Gardner!” The residential manager appeared next to the man in the door, throwing her arm over his shoulders in a friendly manner. He didn’t seem remotely disturbed by this, giving her hand a friendly squeeze in return, even though he _had_ to be able to tell how wrong her fingers were.”Is everything okay? Is that pipe leaking again?”

“No! No, it works just fine. Um. Thank you. I just, the music – ”

“Problem?” a third voice asked, and the scariest woman that Tobias had ever seen stepped between him and the people in the flat.

“Daisy, it’s fine,” the tired man (apparently the flat owner?) said. “He just lives here. He wants us to turn the music down.”

“A likely story.”

“Not everyone’s out to kidnap me, you know.”

“Yeah, well, if we weren’t careful,” a fourth voice said cheerfully, “you’d end up as dead as Monsterboss over there. What’s going on here?” The man who spoke, while not as paralysingly terrifying as the woman in front of Tobias, was definitely someone that Tobias would run from without question if he saw him alone on the street at night. He gave Tobias a disturbingly playful wink as he spoke but most of his attention was on the man doing karaoke, who… it was hard to be sure, under the changing rainbow lights of the disco ball, but compared to everyone else in the room he… was he transparent? This conclusion was not helped by the presence of the woman holding the microphone for him, who Tobias distinctly recalled seeing on the internet several years ago screaming incoherently about ghosts.

“Guys!” the flat owner said impatiently. “How drunk are you all? Can you act like human beings for like two minutes? Mr Gardner, we are very sorry about the noise, we’ll turn it down right away.”

“Right,” Tobias said, trying to maintain some control over the situation. “Thank you.”

Then he walked efficiently – not ran, he just liked to power walk for exercise – back to his own flat.

He had a month left on his lease. He’d been meaning to renew, but it was probably time to find somewhere else to live. On the other side of town, maybe.


	128. Chapter 128

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Jon have a day together.

Martin got up extra early on his Last Day With Jon. They didn’t have any plans to go anywhere special; Jon didn’t care and Martin didn’t want his memories to be full of distractions. But spending the day inside the apartment seemed like a waste, so instead, they drove Melanie’s generously loaned van out to a random patch of countryside and set out to watch the sunrise.

Martin planned to do it at sunset. So starting with sunrise seemed nicely poetic.

They chatted idly on the drive, although truth be told, they didn’t have much to say to each other that they hadn’t said already. Eventually, they found a spot that seemed beautiful, stopped, and got out just in time to watch the sun creep over the horizon.

“I love you,” Martin said as he orange began to bleed out of the sky.

“I love you, too.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“For a while. But you’ll move on. There will be other people to love.”

“Maybe. I’ll still miss you, though.” Martin turned to look at Jon, but Jon was seeing something over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, and Martin spun just in time to see a scowling middle-aged woman leap from the top of Melanie’s van and down toward him, knife in hand.

“Julia, stop!” Jon cried, and as Martin was knocked onto his back into the dirt, a knife pressed to his throat, all he could think was _if I survive this, the others are never letting me out of their sight ever again._

\---------------------

  
  


Tim ventured out of the tunnels to check his texts, and was delighted to find one from Julia, saying she’d be back in London soon, probably later that day. He also received a message from an unknown number with an address and the phrase “blue box in red mailbox – MD”, which was… weird. He spent a moment doing the obvious mental cycle of ‘obvious ambush – too obvious, no one would try that – unless that’s what they want me to think’, before deciding ‘fuck it’ and seeking out said mailbox.

The blue box inside was a cheap kids’ lunchbox, chipped and scratched. Tim checked the outside for any traps or trackers or anything, and opened it.

Inside sat six pure black stones. They looked like the kind that people brought from crystal shops or whatever, all tumbles smooth and promising to promote healing energy or bring calm or whatever they were supposed to do, except… existing slower, somehow. They weren’t heavy, but they _looked_ heavy.

They were about the size of small marbles, although much less evenly shaped. Tim picked a couple up in his bare hand for a few seconds before realising that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do and dropping them again; they felt oily somehow, although they left nothing on his fingers. Hmm.

Well, there was only one “MD” likely to leave such a gift. Tim called Sasha, but his phone told him that her number didn’t exist. Rolling his eyes, he closed the box and headed for the Institute.

\---------------------

  
  


“It’s Martin, right? Nice to see you’re up and about now.”

“Julia,” Jon said, “don’t hurt him. You don’t have to hurt him. What’s this about?”

“Maybe we do have to, maybe we don’t,” an old man announced, climbing out of the truck. From context, Martin supposed that this would have to be Trevor. “It all depends on how cooperative he is.”

“You’ve got something that belongs to us,” Julia said. “And we want it back.”

Martin would have preferred not to speak with a knife pressed against his throat hard enough o draw blood, but it didn’t seem like he was going to be given an option. Carefully he said, “I don’t have anything of yours.”

“Oh, yeah? You took our book.”

“You got that back!”

“Most of it. Not the important parts, though.”

“Seemed suspicious to us,” Trevor added, “that the book would be stolen from us, just show up with your people, and none of ‘em knew who’d sent it to you. Why would someone steal it to do that? Didn’t make much sense. We supposed you’d had it stolen, but if we were gonna get it back, well, revenge wasn’t as high a priority as that. Water under the bridge and all that, if only for Tim’s sake.”

“But then we opened it up, and do you know what we found?” Julia asked. “We found most of the pages in English missing. Including the few who’d actually been useful. No Gerard Keay.”

“So we summoned a couple of the ones who remained, to see if they knew about it. You know what they told us?”

“They said you took the pages out.”

Jon cut in. “And burned them! He didn’t steal them from you; he had no idea you’d ever owned the book! They wanted to be free.”

“Sure, yeah. Someone goes to all the trouble of stealing the book from us – your lot had to be involved, there’s no reason the thief would just send it to you unless you sent them – only to destroy the only useful part of it. No; you’ve got him hidden somewhere, like this one, haven’t you? We want him back.”

“He’s gone,” Martin choked. “I swear, I burn – ”

“Bad luck for you, then,” Trevor said, drawing a blade of his own. “We were hopin’ to go easy on ya, for Tim, but we don’t take kindly to thieves, and if you can’t give him back…”

Jon tried to pull Julia off Martin, but of course, he only went right through her. “Don’t,” he begged. “don’t hurt him. Take me instead.”

“What?”

“I’m no Gerard Keay, but… I know a lot. I’ve read a lot of statements and I remember them all, I know things about what’s out there. Take me. I’ll help you however you want, so long as you don’t hurt him, and leave his people alone.”

Julia and Trevor exchanged a glance. The knife was drawn back – not completely, but enough to make is comfortable to talk.

“Jon, no!” Martin exclaimed.

“Do we have any other choice?”

“Jon, if you go with them, they’ll never let you go. You understand? They’ll keep you forever, and when they die, there’ll be no one to burn your page. You’ll be trapped forever.”

“Nothing is forever, Martin.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Yes. But it’ll keep you safe, from one danger at least.”

“Jon…”

“Alright,” Trevor said. “Where’s the page?”

“I won’t tell you,” Martin spat.

“I’ll show you,” Jon said. “Martin, I – ”

Martin’s phone rang.

“Um,” he said. “That’s… probably one of my people. It might be important.”

“Answer it,” Trevor said. “But let us listen in.”

Moving slowly and nonthreateningly, very aware of the knife still being held quite close to his throat, Martin retrieved his phone. He held it far enough from his ear so that Julia could listen and said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Martin,” Sasha said. “Why am I calling you?”

“I… don’t know. You called me.”

“Yeah, I know. Why?”

“Um… did you want to speak with Trevor or Julia?”

A pause.

“Trevor and Julia are with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“They’re… threatening to kill me?”

Sasha sighed. “Martin, could you please hand the phone to one of them?”

He held the phone out to Trevor, who strode a little way away to have a brief conversation while Julia held Martin at knifepoint. After a couple of minutes, Trevor gestured Julia over. Martin very briefly considered running, but that would probably be very stupid.

They returned, and handed the phone back to him. “She wants to talk to you.”

“Hi, Sasha.”

“Martin, Trevor’s explained the situation. I’ve negotiated a permanent truce in exchange for unrestricted access to our database. You’re the Archivist – is this deal okay with you?”

“Um, yeah. I think everyone should have access to our database.”

“Good. I suppose we’ll have to be prepared for a random influx of monster questions from these two from now on. Enjoy the rest of your day off.”

“Sasha, before you go – can I ask you a favour?”

“Hmm?”

“When you tell the others about this database sharing thing, can you leave out the threatening-to-kill-me part?”

“You’re worried about causing tension?”

“No, I’m worried that this is the first day in months everyone’s let me out of their sight at once and if they find out I was attacked within the first two hours they’ll probably start physically cuffing themselves to me whenever I try to go anywhere.”

Sasha laughed. “Sure, Martin. It’ll be our little secret.” She hung up.

Martin glanced around. Trevor and Julia were nowhere to be found, and he hoped they’d wandered off into the countryside somewhere instead of hiding in the van again. He looked at Jon instead.

“Well, that was an exciting start to the morning. Should we pretend that didn’t happen and get back to the sunrise?”

“Your neck is bleeding, Martin.”

“How unromantic.”


	129. Chapter 129

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha keeps hogging the braincell.

“I swear I am the only person getting anything done around here,” Sasha muttered, putting her phone down. “The database is right here, why was Jon trying to sacrifice himself when… idiots.” She glanced up at the door swinging open. Tim, looking excited.

“Look!” he exclaimed, shaking a lunchbox that, from the sound probably contained rocks.

“Um?”

He brought it over and opened it. “Manuela came through.”

Six little stones. The way they drank in the light made them hard to determine the shape of. Sasha picked one up and immediately dropped it; the touch of it made her nauseous. “Do they work?”

“You’ve got spooky eyeball powers. You tell me.”

“I can’t tell if they work on me from in here. If you take them for a walk, I can try to find your mobile or see if I can find you on camera footage. And I suppose we can ask Martin to try to compel something out of someone holding them tomorrow. But even that sort of thing is only going to give us a vague guess on whether they work on Elias. Jonah. Whatever.”

Tim screwed up his nose. “Do not like the idea of him being out of jail. Do you think he’s still skulking around the tunnels? I keep expecting him to find my hideout and kill me in my sleep.”

“I’m sure if he wanted you dead, he would’ve paid someone else to do it by now.”

“Gee, thanks, Sash. You’re so comforting. Anyway, for all we know, he probably has; wouldn’t put it past him to be paying off the cultists or something.”

“I don’t think the Dark would work with him, and you ticked off the Desolation on your own. I thought you’d mopped all of them up by now?”

“Chased them out of London, at least. Still worried someone’s gonna take a potshot at me. I keep feeling like I’m being watched, like they’re tailing me to jump out of the shadows, and then being like, ‘oh no, that’s probably the lingering sensation of being near a good half of my social circle’. That or more fucking Jonah.”

“Yes, well. Hopefully, these stones will help with that. We can probably set them into jewellery or something.”

“Don’t you hate him? You don’t even sound like you’re angry at him. He ruined our lives, Sasha.”

“I know. But I see no reason to be angry about it.”

“No reason to – ”

“Tim, when one is caught in an avalanche, one doesn’t waste one’s remaining energy yelling at the snow.”

“He’s not snow! He’s a person, and he deserves – ”

“Is he, though? Maybe he was, two hundred years ago. But… he projected a painful experience right into your mind, right? About the kittens?”

“Yeah…”

“And he threatened to do it with Danny.”

“You’re not making him sound better.”

“My point is, Tim, that if he’s gotten that information, and he can project it to you as an experience, he’s experienced it too, right? He’s got this experience lined up in his own mind that’s bad enough to break you. He did it to Melanie, too; it’s safe to assume that he’s queued up something for everyone in the archives, at least. And probably for Gertrude and her assistants, and the previous archive crews, back two hundred years. If he’s willing to flaunt about that kind of power to control us, who else has he used it on? Donors, politicians? How many individual traumas from other minds has that man lived through over two hundred years?”

“So what, we should feel sorry for him?”

“Oh, absolutely not. Everything he is, he obviously did to himself, presumably with a lot more knowledge of the consequences than we ever had. That guy is evil, and he chooses to be evil every day. But that’s my point; _he keeps doing it_. He subjected himself to those horrible memories and didn’t bat an eye over it… because he was pissed off that you’d stained his carpet with food dye. That’s such a petty reason to put himself through something like that and the only way it makes any sense to me is if we conclude that that man simply isn’t capable of feeling sympathy or compassion for anyone, even himself. The only way it works is if that pain has become meaningless to him. We work with an _actual manifestation of human fear_ who has a greater breadth of compassion than Jonah Magnus. I don’t hate him, because I simply don’t see the point. If he feels nothing for anyone, fine; we’ve all got baggage. But if he’s going to use that as a weapon for petty personal gain, if he’s going to keep hurting people and making these choices and he has no intellectual, emotional or internal moral imperative to stop, if there’s no hope that he’s going to stop, then seeing him as anything worthy of hating is, in my opinion, a waste of time and energy. He’s the snow, and I’d rather concentrate on surviving him.”

“Yeah, I think you’re letting him off easy. Just because the bastard turned himself into a fucking monster and decided to spent centuries doing evil shit doesn’t mean we just have to take it. I’m gonna keep on hating him.”

“Each to our own, I suppose.”

Tim snatched up a couple of the dark stones and shoved them into his pocket. “So you just want me to walk around an area with government CCTV cameras and you’ll see if you can find me?”

“Pretty much.”

“Like a game of reverse hide and seek. Great. I’ll see you later.”

\---------------------

  
  


“A merry go round. At the London Zoo.”

“Yes.”

“You’re _kidding_.”

“I was… in a bit of a weird place.”

“Had Georgie just dumped you?”

“There are other reasons to be in a weird place!”

“Okay, so what was it.”

“Georgie had just… suggested that we take some time apart.”

“That’s why you found a merry go round ‘thrilling’?”

“I’ll have you know, that particular merry go round moves significantly faster than the average merry go round. But yes.”

\-------------------

  
  


Tobias had had enough of this. These… weird people, in this weird building. It had been a normal apartment building not too long ago, before _she_ had moved in.

And it wasn’t like he could even really talk about it with anyone. Maybe his neighbours were having the same problems, but probably not. What was he supposed to say? That the residential manager had been super creepy when she’d fixed a pipe? That he was eighty per cent sure he’d seen a ghost doing karaoke downstairs? He didn’t want his neighbours to think he was losing his mind. Or his family. Maybe he was losing his mind – should he see a psychologist?

Some quick googling found him the Magnus Insitute.

Might as well, right? They probably wouldn’t do anything to help, but he could at least tell his story, and they’d probably wait for him to leave the building before they started talking about how much of a lunatic he was. So he went, and was directed down to the archives, which seemed like a weird place to give a statement but whatever.

The woman he found there looked vaguely familiar, although he wasn’t sure why. She gave him a friendly smile. “Here to make a statement?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Great! I can take it. I’m Sasha, by the way.”

“Tobias.”

“Great. We can do this in the office. Don’t mind me; I’m just monitoring an experiment in the background,” she said, picking up an open laptop that looked, to him, to be switched off. With the efficiency of someone who’d done this a thousand times, she set up a tape recorder and a second laptop (this one actually switched on), explaining in the tone of someone who had to say it a lot, “We record digital and analogue in parallel to suit some of the researchers’ older equipment and software. Is that alright with you?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“Okay. So what’s your statement about?”

“Just some… weird stuff that’s been happening in my flat.” As he said it, Tobias realised, with a shock, why the woman in front of him looked so familiar.

She was his residential manager’s flatmate.

He stood up quickly. “Actually, you know, I think this might be a bad idea. I’ll just – ”

“Oh, sorry. I’m interrupting something?” The voice coming from the doorway was familiar, and when Tobias spun to face the speaker, his heart didn’t so much sink as drop through the floor. It was one of the people from the downstairs party; the man who’d winked at him playfully, but in the playful manner that a cat might have towards a bird. “Hang on, do I know you from somewhere?”

“No,” Tobias said quickly. “I was just leaving.” He practically ran out of the building.

Definitely time to find a new place to live. Maybe leave London altogether.

\--------------------

  
  


“That was weird,” Tim remarked. “What got him so spooked?”

“He’s not from one of those cults you’ve had problems with, is he? Might’ve seen you and panicked.”

“God, I hope not. The last thing we need is cults hanging around here again. How’d it go?”

“Can’t find your phone, and my ‘software’ can’t find your face on the cameras when you’ve got the stones,” Sasha reported. “But you’re not invisible. I pulled up footage from places I figured you’d be and I can see you just fine on the screen, I just can’t… search for you. I have to use my physical eyes.”

“So if we extrapolate to Jonah, we can assume he can’t find us specifically, but if he happens to be watching an area we’re in, he’ll still notice us there?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure it’s safe to extrapolate anything. We can be more confident when we test Martin’s powers, but to assume that any of us work in the same way, especially given that Jonah’s wired up in a creepy magical artefact, I think we’re opening ourselves up to trouble.”

“Yeah. Probably. Can you call me, when I have the stones? From your weird broken phone?”

“I didn’t try. My broken computer stuff only works within range of the Institute’s wifi, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the stones block it.”

“I tried to call you, and I can’t. Maybe you should get a second phone. One not destroyed by spooky magical powers. Otherwise we’re gonna have some communication problems.”

“Yeah, probably. I’ll go shopping on the weekend.”

Tim left to go to work, and Sasha sat back in Martin’s chair and rubbed her temples. There really was no reason why Martin couldn’t be back in the office full-time; the sheer number of dangers he’d faced outside the office basically buried Basira’s ‘Elias wants to sacrifice the Archivist inside the Institute’ theory. But if he didn’t want to take live statements and wanted to stagger his sleep schedule to protect Tim and Colleen’s dreams, it was probably for the best that he didn’t keep normal office hours anyway. Today, of course, was just for him and Jon, and _of course_ he’d been attacked by a pair of Hunters. Probably got some new scars to add to the bite on his face, the knife wound in his arm… it was like he was trying to fill out a bingo card of fear attacks. And as the number of apocalypses that had failed increased, leaving the Eye (hell, they might all have failed except the Eye by now, the archives didn’t have enough information to be sure), more people were probably going to come after him.

Sasha glared at the dumb concept map that, with Martin mostly just coming in to read statements and sate his supernatural hunger, hadn’t been updated in forever. Why did people have to keep trying to end the damn world? Even the most devoted servants of the Fears couldn’t possibly think a fear apocalypse would leave a nice place to live. And they were so messy; how would a world of one fear even work? The effects of the Unknowing seemed to her to have a heady dose of Spiral in there, and there was no way the Extinguished Sun wouldn’t have needed a heaping dose of Hunt or Lonely or Vast to keep people afraid of the Dark. The taxonomy was useful, but trying to treat the fears as actually separate things was nonsense.

And the Eye was the stupidest of all. Yes, people hated being watched, followed, analysed; yes, people hated being exposed to information that might harm them, but deep at the root of it, the fear of observation simply could not stand on its own. It was always about being watched by a Stranger, being stalked and Hunted, having your embarrassing secrets exposed and being rejected and Lonely, being mentally Corrupted or driven to Madness by what you could see… honestly, how would a world terrified of the Observing even work without –

Sasha froze. Her eyes skimmed the fourteen fears lined up along the left side of the map. She pulled off the notecard with “Observing” written on it, with the big X through it. Perhaps ignoring that one in the map, trusting the servants of other fears to deal with it, had been a fatal mistake. Jonah had buried Jon. They weren’t sure who’d sent them the ghost book, but he was on a very short list of candidates. Jonah had been completely unsurprised to see them at the Panopticon, had told Martin how to find Melanie…

Sasha dropped the notecard and got the hell out of the Institute, taking one of the Dark stones with her and ignoring how the very touch of it made her want to throw up. She had a lot of research to do, very fast, and she couldn’t afford to be Watched.


	130. Chapter 130

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin says goodbye. Basira and Daisy find a solution to a problem.

Together, Jon and Martin watched the sun go down.

“So.”

“So.”

“You’re still certain about this?”

“Yes. Are you sure you can do it? I know you’ve had trouble with – ”

“I can do it. For you, I can do it.”

“Thank you, Martin. For everything.”

“Thank you for everything. You came back, you, you stayed… I love you, so much.”

“I know. Me too.”

Martin reached his hands out and Jon curled his around them, like they were holding hands. The two leaned forward, and Martin felt a cool electric tingle on his lips, then his forehead, as Jon’s touched his. He closed his eyes.

“Goodbye, Jon,” he whispered.

And when his eyes opened, Jon was gone.

He went to the van to fetch the page. He had a job to do.

\-------------------------

  
  


“I think I might love you,” Tim mumbled into Julia’s neck as she tried to extricate herself from the tangled network of sheets.

“You barely know me. Throw yourself at people too fast and you’re gonna get your heart broken.”

“Hesitate too long and you miss out on a good thing. Both are risks, and I prefer the fun one. Anyway, you know you love me.”

Julia snorted. “I never said that.”

“I’ll get you to admit it one of these days.”

\-------------------------------

  
  


“Thanks for that incredibly gross story, Alan.”

“Seriously, that was fucked up. I don’t think I’ll ever open a book again without checking for this Leitner guy’s name.”

“Bit of a change from ghost hunting, right?”

“Oh, I saw my fair share of blood ghost hunting. Got my shoulder torn up that one time. Also got shot by a ghost once.”

“I don’t think you’ve shared that story with our listeners, Melanie. Care to talk?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve got enough criminal trespass charges without confessing to more on air.”

“Fair enough. Ghosts are pretty fucked up in their own way. I got into a discussion about this with the ghost of my ex-boyfriend from college one time? Said the whole deal sucked. Apparently being a ghost hurts, just feels _wrong_. He talked his boyfriend into exorcising him, which I think is a good call for any ghost, honestly. You won’t catch me coming back from the dead if I have any say in the matter.”

“Any advice for our audience on exorcising ghosts, Georgie?”

“Afraid not, this was kind of a special case. Anyone who’s successfully done it, feel free to contact us; maybe you’ve got some wisdom to share. Until then, enough of you bought my cousin’s album that he bribed me ten pounds this time, so thank you, people with truly awful music tastes, for supporting the channel. This is ‘The Sky’s Not Been The Limit Since Nineteen Sixty One’, by Anybody’s Game.”

\----------------------

  
  


Martin built a little fire.

It was probably illegal, just making a campfire in someone’s paddock without permission. It was probably illegal for him to be there. But he knew he wasn’t going to be able to bring himself to take a lighter to the page, so this would have to do.

He wasn’t going to ask for help. He could do this himself, for Jon.

He could do this himself, for himself. The stupid obsession with information didn’t own him. He was still in control.

His hand shook as he lifted the vellum that contained all that was left of Jonathan Sims. There was so much in there, a whole person, and… and if he didn’t do this… what was Jon going to do, next time he summoned him? Refuse to talk to him? No, he’d understand. He’d…

He’d play along, because he had no choice. He’d understand Martin’s shortcomings, being the Archivist, and he’s probably never forgive him, but he’d accept it; he’d… he’d be what Martin had feared he’d turned him into, before Jon (and everyone else) had pointed out how stupid he was being. A prisoner of circumstance, existing at Martin’s whim because he had no choice.

Martin wouldn’t do that to him. He could do this. Don’t think of what’s on the page, just… you’re just burning something, like the kindling of the fire. Think of something else. Think of how pretty the flames are.

He distracted himself long enough to drop the page in without really thinking about it, and balled his hands into fists, refusing to let himself rescue it from the flames. It shrivelled and crumbled to ash.

Martin burst into tears. It was hard to know whether the pain belonged to Martin Blackwood, the person, or Martin Blackwood, the Archivist.

Both. It was probably both.

\--------------------

  
  


“Black stones, huh?” Basira asked as she dropped some onion over Daisy’s shoulder into the pot on the stove.

“Yep,” Tim said.

“You sure it’s not a trick?” Daisy stirred the pot. “Dominguez probably doesn’t trust us. They might be something designed to kill us, rather than shield us.”

“They seemed safe enough,” Tim said. “And they work on Sasha’s powers, so they do shield us.”

“Mm. I think we should be careful.”

“I’ll go in extra early tomorrow,” Basira said, “and do some investigation.”

“I’m coming,” Daisy said immediately. “Just in case.”

“You have other stuff to do.”

“So do you. You’re just using these stones as an excuse to avoid working on that assignment tomorrow.”

“This is genuinely important, though.”

“I will make Martin give you time off work for your degree if I have to.”

“I don’t think he even knows about it, actually. It hasn’t come up in conversation.”

“You’re studying to be a psychotherapist and it hasn’t come up in conversation?”

“Well I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” Basira said with a wry smile, “but things have been a little bit busy.”

“Okay, fair.”

“Anyway, even with the bachelor’s out of the way years ago, studying takes a long time! I’ve got another two years before I can even begin supervised practice, and that’s if I manage to keep up a full time schedule, and what with all the constant threats to the world I’m probably going to have to drop down to part time eventually.”

“The true horror of all of these evil forces,” Tim cut in, deadpan. “Cutting into Basira’s study time.”

“Absolutely,” Daisy played along. “If all of these constant kidnapping, murder and apocalypse attempts would stop distracting her, she would have learned how to turn the world into a perfect utopia by now.”

\------------------------

Martin awoke at five thirty in the morning with a splitting headache.

No; not a headache. He knew better than that by now. This was a deep, gnawing hunger, his mind starving and ready to eat itself alive. He’d burned so much energy, finding the Panopticon, finding the way into the Lonely, then everything with Jon, and he’d already read through all the statements he had at home. Usually, if it started to get bad, he’d summon Jon to talk to, to distract himself, but that was no longer an option. And it was never _this_ bad.

Certain… flaws… in their residence plan were quickly becoming clear. At least half of the other residents of the building ad a healthy fear of Mary by this point, and usually their presence was distracting, but now he could feel each and every one of them and it was all he could do to pull the covers over himself and stay still, to avoid knocking on a neighbour’s door and simply taking what he so desperately needed. Mary herself was stalking around the upper levels, as she sometimes did; Martin didn’t think she’d even gone home that night. He could sense her, like the smell of walking past a bakery, adding to the stories that would feed him.

Martin was halfway to the front door before he realised what he was doing, and froze.

He couldn’t stay here. But he certainly couldn’t go out there. If he went out there, he _would_ hurt someone. He’d pull out of them as much of themselves as he could and leave the remains to recover.

He had to get out of here.

Martin dropped through the trapdoor they’d built in the floor, down into the basement. The basement door was locked, and he’d left the key in his house on purpose; instead, he turned to the tunnels. He had to be careful, here. Those tunnels had so many exits, and while they were very easy to get lost in, he didn’t think it was possible for him to get lost for long; his hunger would point him towards the prey wandering the early morning streets. He had to stay focused. He couldn’t give in to temptation.

 _There’ll be something to eat at the Institute_ , he told himself. He tried not to think about how dry and unsatisfying the written statements were likely to be. It still took effort to read them; could he even fill up on them? Or would he pass out trying, like that time Jon had tried to read too many and gone into a short coma? He supposed it didn’t matter – either would keep him off the streets.

He just hoped he didn’t run into Tim on the way. Tim kept moving his base of operations in the tunnels, but he stayed in the general vicinity of the apartment building, and if Martin stumbled on him now… well, Tim had put himself in so many bad situations, hunting. He had so many stories that Martin didn’t know, yet.

Martin tried not to think about worst case scenarios and pressed on until he found himself at the trapdoor in his office floor. He pushed his way out and noticed, with some surprise, Daisy and Basira at his desk, pondering a small pile of dark stones that made him sick to look at. He looked instead at them, and immediately regretted it as he became keenly aware that these two had been Sectioned police officers for years.

“You okay?” Basira asked as Martin climbed out of the trapdoor.

“N-no. No, you… you have to lock me up, somewhere in the archives. Somewhere without access to the tunnels. I… I can’t be around people right now, I can’t be trusted to…”

“That bad, huh?” She pushed a paper statement towards him. He barely glanced at it. He’d read them in a bit, as many as he could handle, but it was like a dry rice cracker when two three course meals sat in front of him.

He closed his eyes. “I can’t be around you two,” he said. “Or anyone. There’s got to be a storage room here I can’t break out of, or, or…”

“Martin. Martin, look at me.”

“Basira – ”

“Martin. You can’t hurt me. I’m an archival assistant. You can’t give me nightmares.”

“You can’t be suggesting – ”

“Daisy, the door?”

The pair had talked about this before, Martin realised. They’d had this contingency plan lined up, and hadn’t seen fit to inform him. Daisy locked the door. Martin backed toward the trapdoor.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said. “You’re smart. You would’ve seen this possibility right away, when we were talking about feeding off doomed people and criminals and stuff, and you didn’t mention it. You know as well as I do that it’s more than just nightmares, and you don’t want to do this.”

“You’re right,” Basira said. “I don’t. But it’s our best option.” She took the tape recorder off the shelf, stuck a blank tape in, and hit record.

Martin dove for the trapdoor. Daisy kicked it shut and pinned him to the floor. He tried to shout, to drown out Basira’s voice; Daisy covered his mouth.

“Statement of Basira Hussain, regarding the recovery of strange contraband in a London flat. Statement begins…”


	131. Chapter 131

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunters notice something strange in the forest.

“… Statement ends. Any better?”

Daisy let Martin up. He rubbed the feeling back into his arms and scowled at both of them. “That wasn’t okay.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well… don’t do it again.”

“I can’t promise that. We agreed to look out for each other when we were picking the next Archivist, remember?”

“That wasn’t looking out for me. Enough written statements would – ”

“Maybe. How many innocents would you have bet on it? Maybe locking you in some storeroom with a supply of statements would’ve just been the start of a downward spiral, if no amount of them were enough. Maybe you’re strong enough to break through locks, and another day or so and you would’ve attacked Daisy, or someone else in the Institute, or found another tunnel entrance we didn’t know about and go hunting across London. Maybe – ”

“You don’t know any of that! The statements might have been enough! I might’ve kept it together!”

“Might have. But I doubt it. You didn’t see yourself. You look better now, and if you’re careful to keep like this, maybe you can keep it together with the written statements. But if you slip that far again, I’m going to do what I have to to protect everyone.”

“You sound like you’re threatening to shoot me.”

“It won’t get that bad. I have a _lot_ of stories, Martin.” She said it like a threat. He supposed it was.

“Well, while we’re all here, I suppose I’ll go and make tea,” Martin snapped. He couldn’t be around those two right now, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to storm off like some petulant child being driven from his own office.

What really irritated Martin was that they were right. Basira was the best choice of a, a food source – she had a lot of stories, and she was immune to the dreams. That didn’t make her immune to Martin; he remembered well enough the raw fear that had never quite healed after giving his Prentiss statement. He’d never really questioned that before becoming the Archivist; being attacked by killer worms, then beseiged in one’s flat by killer worms, then living in the archives to try to avoid the killed worms that had started staking out the archives, then finding tunnels full of killer worms that nearly killed you and everyone around you… that would traumatise anyone whether or not they talked about it in a spooky Eye temple. Most people out there with fresh and powerful trauma didn’t have to give a statement to the Archivist to get in that position.

But giving such a statement would put someone in that position. Basira had opened up old mental wounds to give him her story, refreshed details in her mind she’d forgotten and would have to heal from all over again, if she even could. Maybe she could, without the dream to remind her every night, but it was still a sacrifice she shouldn’t have to make.

Shouldn’t have to, but did have to. Martin didn’t like being treated like some vicious starving animal that had to be fed pieces of his friends to keep him controllable. He hated that Basira had seen him like that, and hated even more that it had been the right call.

He’d have to be careful with his powers, make sure he was reading enough statements, and above all keep a hold on himself. He didn’t want what had just happened to become business as usual.

He didn’t want to be like Prentiss or Fairchild or Hopworth or the others that kept showing up in the statements – a monster to be managed, avoided or killed, with little left inside but a God that needed to be fed.

He returned to the office and grumpily handed the women their cups of tea. Because he was angry at them, he made Basira’s in a large mug instead of the tiny cup that held her preferred portion, and put milk in Daisy’s. He watched their expressions with some satisfaction as they noticed, but they simply thanked him and drank them anyway.

“So what are these stones?” he asked, trying not to feel sick or lost as he looked at them.

“Present from Manuela Dominguez,” Basira announced. “Judging by the look on your face, I’d guess they work, although we’re not sure exactly what they do.”

“They feel evil,” Martin said.

“Really? No shit!”

“I mean, how do we know they’re not some kind of trap, designed to kill us?”

“That’s what I said,” Daisy said.

“We don’t,” Basira said. “I propose we tell artefact storage that we were sent one strange stone and give them one to research. The other four, I guess we can use or not use, until they get back to us.”

Basira was poking through the stones without any apparent problems. Curious, Martin reached for one, and pulled his hand back immediately as soon as he touched it. It wasn’t painful, just… disgusting, somehow, on a level he couldn’t really explain. Anyway, he’d spent enough time in a box full of darkness, thank you very much. He didn’t need any more.

“Anyway,” Basira said, “we can do some tests of our own, right?” She scooped the stones up in her hand. “Martin, compel something from me.”

“Uh, alright. What’s your favourite flavour of crisp?”

“Salt and vinegar,” she said immediately. “No point in eating crisps if it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to eat you back.” She blinked in surprise. “Huh. Okay, guess it doesn’t defend against that one.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Martin said. “I can compel in the tunnels, too, and Jonah can’t see in there. I think there’s a, a difference between pulling information from a person in front of me, who I can see, and in trying to find that person, which is what we don’t want Jonah to be able to do.”

“But you’ve said before that you think that to read minds he has to be in the same place, right?”

“I think so. Based on when he used to want to talk face to face… but I’m not certain.”

“Well, either works for us, right?” Daisy said. “Stone wise?” If he can do it at a distance, then maybe the stones can stop him from ‘finding’ us… and if he needs line of sight, it’s not an issue, since I doubt he’s going to be popping up to have any chats. So if we carry the stones and don’t see him anywhere, we can probably assume no mind reading or spying. Probably.” She wrinkled her nose. “Unless we’re wrong, which we are quite often, in which case that kind of assumption might be a fatal mistake.”

“He might come up for a chat,” Martin pointed out. “He knows we won’t kill him and risk each others’ lives.”

“Who said anything about killing him? If I see that bastard, I’m breaking all of his limbs, pulling his tongue out and calling the police to come pick him up.”

“… Hmm. Good point. He’ll probably avoid us, then. Or you, at least.”

“Melanie said she did some jewellery making in college,” Basira said. “When she comes in, I’ll see if she can put these in pendants or something for us.”

Martin nodded, trying not to look at the stones. Soon enough, he supposed, he wouldn’t be able to have a conversation without any of his friends without one of those damn things in the picture.

What joy.

\-----------------------

  
  


“Are you immune to responding to text messages or something?” Julia asked impatiently as she and Tim strode down the street to the cafe.

“Sorry, I was in the tunnels.”

“The what?”

“The um, the secret network of Smirke-constructed tunnels under a good portion of London? They’re pretty dangerous if you don’t know them, but they block the Eye, so… anyway, no phone reception down there.” He grinned. “Anyway, texting the next day? A little eager, aren’t you?”

She just rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Come on. Trevor’s waiting inside.”

“Real upmarket place, this,” Trevor noted as they entered, raising some kind of complicated speciality drink in greeting. “Getting soft, Jule? Letting your man here get you addicted to the high life?”

“That’s me,” Tim said, deadpan, as they sat down. “Living the high life. I’m guessing this is about a job?”

Trevor handed him his phone, the photo gallery open. Tim scrolled through a handful of photos of… well, it was hard to be sure what he was looking at. If he’d been asked several years ago, he would’ve said it looked like some trees and grass had caught fire, been doused, and were now covered in very heavy frost. But he’d had a lot of experience with fire, since then. Fire didn’t move in the right ways to do what he was looking at.

“What the hell am I looking at?” he asked.

“No idea,” Trevor shrugged. “We already sent the photos to your friends at the Institute, hoping their database might have something. But we thought maybe you might know something they don’t.”

Tim flicked through a few more photos. More trees, mostly, all with the same weird… disease? “Can the cold do that to the trees? Make them black like that?”

“Dunno.”

“Hmm. This is going to be something really weird and dangerous, isn’t it?”

Julia grinned. “Afraid you’re not up to it?”

“I’m up to anything. Worried I’m gonna have to carry you and the old man, though.”

“Nice confidence, rookie. That’ll get you killed.”

“Yeah, Daisy tells me that all the time.” He handed the phone back. “So, do we have a gameplan?”

“Without knowing where this thing is what it is, or what it wants, we can’t do much,” Trevor shrugged. “For now, we gotta wait for information, and hope it doesn’t do too much damage in the meantime.”

\-----------------------------

  
  


“I found, I found one of them,” the woman stammered, holding out a piece of paper in a trembling hand. “Basira Hussain attends several night classes at – ”

“Where does she live?” Jude asked, taking the paper and glancing at it.

The woman shook her head. “She’s not on any lease anywhere. I checked everywhere.”

“And the others?”

“Nowhere. I, I found where old addresses for all of them, but nothing recent.”

“Unfortunate. You know our agreement.”

“Please, just – just give me more time! I’ll look again, I’ll look harder, I’ll find them – ”

“So you haven’t looked everywhere?”

“… what?”

“You said you’d looked everywhere. Now you say there’s more to find if you have more time. Which is it? Did you fail because you were lazy and haven’t looked everywhere? Or have you looked everywhere, failed, and have no further value to me?”

“P-please… I did everything you wanted…”

“You tried.” Jude reached out and caressed the woman’s cheek; she could see how much the touch hurt, but the woman was too terrified to pull away. “My dear. Your mistake was not in failing to protect what you had; you’re clearly too weak to do that. It was in daring to have anything worth protecting in the first place. It will be a relief when it’s gone, don’t you think? You won’t have to worry about it any more.”

“Please, no… I’ll do anything…”

“You said that last time, and what I wanted you to do was find the homes of the people on the list. So clearly, you were lying to me. But, perhaps I am merciful. Your family are in the bedroom. Go.”

The woman bolted past Jude, heading for the bedroom. Jude stayed long enough to savour her wails of grief and despair. Stupid woman. She should have known that Jude would kill her family the moment she left the house.

Now she was as free as Jude. As free as the world would be, someday. When Jude had the power for it. But she needed practice first.

And soon, she would be ready to practice on Timothy Stoker.


	132. Chapter 132

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Basira investigate.

“Great,” Martin groaned, flipping through the pictures of… burned?… forest. “More weird spooky stuff.”

“It’s what we do,” Basira shrugged.

“Yeah, but Sasha usually does this part. Is she even coming in today?”

“I think she’s experimenting with one of those stones. Tim said there were six, and there were only five when we got in. You know Sasha and her scientific mind.”

“You’re the one who keeps wanting to experiment every time I get some new power.”

“Yeah, but Sasha’s got eyeball powers of her own and doesn’t need to cajole an assistant. And she’s got experience in Artefact Storage, so she’s less likely to get herself killed. Frankly I’m happy to take her lead on this one.”

“Leaving us on Trevor and Julia Info Duty. Have you seen anything like this in any of our statements? I can’t find anything in the database, but I’m not the best at understanding the search system.”

“I can’t find it, either. We should ask Mary later,” Basira suggested. “She digitised most of this, she might remember something.”

“No chance that this is just a really severe frost? Frost can kill plants. Can it make them look like that?”

“I’m not finding anything like it on google. I’m voting something new and spooky.”

“Great.” Martin glanced at the stack of written statements beside him. “Maybe the exact answer we need will be in the next statement I pick up.” Without Mary in the Institute and with Martin’s dietary requirements, the archive crew had fallen into an easy pattern; he’d digitise the written statements as he recorded them (apparently ‘your hands just fly across the keyboard, it’s super creepy to watch but at least it gets it done’), which left the sound of the keyboard on the tape but absolutely nobody cared, and Basira, Sasha and Melanie (whoever happened to be in and feeling like doing some work that day) were slowly working their way through digitising the tapes, ready to join him on Mount Paper when they’d all been done.

“By the way,” Basira said, “we’re down to the last ten Gertrude tapes. Lots of interesting stuff in them so far.”

“Great. Soon you can rejoin me in this mess.”

“Yeah, not looking forward to that. It seems to get harder and harder to type the written ones out without ‘reading’ them and that’s not as energising for the rest of us as it is for you.”

Martin glanced at the next statement. It was an End one. He shut his eyes before he started reading the statement itself; once he got into them, it was practically impossible to stop, and he didn’t want to think about Jon for the moment. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

“I’m going across the road to buy a pastry,” he announced. “I need a break.”

“I’ll come with you,” Basira said.

“It’s just across the road.”

“You got kidnapped right outside your house.”

“… Point.”

“Anyway, they do great eclairs over at that place.”

The pair went to the cafe. They sat at a little outside table where martin vaguely recalled, forever ago, finding a Leitner last used by Elias – Jonah. That had been so long ago. It felt like a different person had picked that up, had discovered its meanings, had sat here later and looked up at those big Institute windows and taken note of all the people around with cameras in their pockets and had figured out how to put Elias Bouchard in jail.

Man, he could use some of those Spider powers right about now. The Eye’s random, disconnected facts weren’t helping; what he needed was a supernatural power that would let him understand just what the hell was going on.

Although the thing he suddenly found himself Knowing about the familiar woman walking into the Magnus Institute was helpful, if unwelcome. Martin sighed and stood back up. “I have to get back inside, actually.”

“Why?”

“That woman who just went in? Her name’s Colleen McKenzie, and she’s here to break into the archives.”

“Sabateur? Assassin?”

“She’s had an encounter with the Web, so that’s not impossible, but I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to find out who the hell I am.”

“And you’re going to…?”

“Go and explain things to her before she gets hurt or breaks anything important.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

“She’ll only get more scared if you – ”

“I’m not leaving you alone with a possible Web assassin.”

“… Okay. Fair.”

She did, at least, wait silently in the main room of the archives and wave him alone into the office, apparently deciding that she could protect him better if she were able to take an assailant by surprise. Hey, whatever didn’t panic their intruder.

The door to the office was open. Colleen was frantically flipping through stacks of papers in one of the desk drawers. If she was looking for some kind of explanation in there, she wouldn’t find one. She slammed the drawer shut in frustration, stepped back, and caught sight of the old apocalypse concept map. Martin gave her a few seconds to stare in bafflement before leaning on the doorframe and clearing his throat loudly.

“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help you find it,” he said. “You don’t have to make a mess of my office.”

She jumped at the sight of him and drew a knife. Martin had been attacked by enough people who knew how to actually hold a knife that her attempt was more amusing than threatening, but nevertheless he raised both empty hands before stepping into the room.

As soon as he stepped froward, the knife came up. “Stay back!”

Martin stopped. “I’m going to walk to that corner over there,” he said calmly, “so that I’m not between you and the door. Alright?”

Colleen nodded. Martin made his way to the corner furthest from her, very slowly, and sat on a box, which he figured would be less threatening than looming.

“What do you want?” Colleen asked.

“You broke into my office,” Martin pointed out, because he felt like having his lunch interrupted had earned him the right to be difficult. Hadn’t they already had this conversation once? Although he supposed that if he were in her shoes, he’d want clearer answers, too.

“What are you?”

“I’m Martin. And like I said last time, our meeting – what I did to you – was an accident. I understand why you hate – ”

“That’s not what I asked. What _are_ you? You’re like that thing that isn’t Dale, right? And the spider woman, and that fire one. Because of you, I see them every night, showing me how close I came to nearly dying. So what are you?”

“Oh. Well. I’m not like the thing that isn’t Dale. I… might be like the other two, if I’ve identified them correctly, but the descriptions aren’t… look, it’s complicated.”

“Then explain it to me.””It’s kind of a long story – ”

“I have time.”

“Right. Well, then. I suppose we should start with… with the nature of fear.”

The explanation took most of the afternoon. Martin supposed that it was a lot to take in, all at once. He explained the fears, and Basira came in partway through to help, and showed her what they had on the not!them, the Lightless Flame, and Annabelle Cane.

“That’s who the woman was?”

“No idea. She’s the only Web avatar who’s still alive who we have any files on, and she fits the description. But the Web is subtle, and we only get information that we see or that people bring us. There’s a whole world of stuff out there that isn’t in this database.”

“And… this fire cult woman…”

“The cult has been mostly wiped out, but I believe you probably met a member, yes. The cult all manifest fire powers and hate the Web. There was a big conflict involving their messiah at a halfway house… it’s really complicated.”

“Well, whoever she was, she saved me. Not complaining.”

“She would just as happily have killed you, if she cared more about feeding off you than upsetting the Web. These people are dangerous.”

“Are you dangerous?”

“I’ve already hurt you about as much as I’m capable of. My friends, however…” he glanced at Basira.

“How do I protect myself?” she asked. “From any of this?”

“There’s no sure-fire way. From the statements we have, I’d say the best method is to not get involved, if you have any choice. Walk away when you can. Where that’s not an option… don’t be afraid, if you can help it. More than one person has gotten through by passing out, or falling asleep or being obliviously unconcerned with what they’re facing. You can still die, being helpless and all that, but these things are made or empowered by fear, so there’s a very real chance that you’ll be left alone. One of my friends once rescued another from the Buried by drugging him unconscious so his fear would stop getting them lost. If those don’t work, the only real option is to face the fear directly. Maintaining strong connections with other people will help you navigate through anything, particularly the Lonely, but I’ve seen it work on others as well. There’s a statement in here by somebody who was walking his dog and got caught in a timeless Spiral stone circle and managed to get out by remembering how much he loved his mother, and how he didn’t want to be late for dinner and cause her pain and worry. Maintaining confidence in your own will and autonomy will help you against the Web, and finding it within yourself to trust the people around you will help you fight the Stranger. If that doesn’t work… there’s my method.”

“Becoming a… a person with these powers.”

“I don’t recommend it. I’m a bit of a special case; I didn’t really have any affinity for this whole watching power before I joined up with the Institute. But most of us do. We, we take the fear and use it, feeding it not with our own fear but with the fear of others. Feed these things with your own fear and you’ll either be eaten up or have a lucky escape. Feed them with others and… well, it’s one way to stay relatively safe, so long as you keep feeding it. But you shouldn’t. We’re trying to use it for good, but, well, it didn’t work out for good for you, did it?”

“But you did stop an apocalypse.”

“Yeah. And maybe that tips the scales in our favour, or maybe we could’ve done that without the evil powers. But I don’t think you can save up heroism as a kind of free pass to hurt other people. And if you become one of us, you will hurt other people.”

“What makes you think I’d even have the option to become one of you?”

“Because you saw the monster from your nightmares on the street, and marched right up and hit him. Then you broke into his office, knowing full well that he had friends much scarier than him, looking for information. Then you sat down with him for an entire afternoon asking him questions about a world that you know it’s incredibly dangerous to know about. Those sorts of choices are only going to mark you for the Eye deeper than I did, if you’re not careful.”

“You’re telling me there’s this entire other world and I should just… not investigate it. I should just keep being the person who was so entrenched in the life that had been assumed for me that a serial killer with spider powers asked me to come to her car and I just did. I’m not going to just shrug my shoulders and go back to that.”

“You’re playing with fire if you don’t.”

“I was playing with fire when I did. It didn’t exactly keep me safe, did it?”

“… No. I suppose not.”

“Well. This has been very enlightening.” Colleen stood up. “Thank you for answering my questions. I’m going to leave now, and don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope to never see you again outside my nightmares.”

“Stay safe, Colleen.”

“I’ll try very hard to.”

They watched her leave.

“Well,” Basira said, “she’s going to die.”

“Yeah. Probably.” Martin rubbed his temples. “That took longer than I thought it would. I’m going home.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll use the tunnels; it’s perfectly – ”

“I’ll come with you.”

\------------------------

  
  


“Thank you, Mr Hopworth,” Sasha gasped, and hobbled out into the street with as much dignity as she could muster. She wondered what she would’ve thought of this a few years ago, trading one of her own ribs for information. It seemed so sensible now. There was an apocalypse on the horizon. A rib to help save the world? No question.

Jared and his cronies had been sent by someone. They hadn’t been after the files in the archives, like she’d thought; they’d been given a name on a note. Martin’s name.

Jared had shown her the note. It was Elias’ handwriting. So that could support Basira’s old ‘sacrifice the Archivist in the archives’ theory, but with the People’s Church, with Mary Keay, with that whole earlier business with the Web… it was time to talk to Martin about specifically how many other powers had left their mark on him, and where they’d come from. If she was right about what Jonah was attempting, there might not be all that many attacks left to go.

She pulled out her phone, and sighed impatiently. She’d forgotten that the damn thing only worked in the Institute. Instead, she approached a stranger on the street. “Excuse me, can I borrow your phone to call my friend? It’s kind of important.”


	133. Chapter 133

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary's apartment building gets a surprise visitor!

They really had been very easy to find.

Some interrogation of the college staff had gotten the address they had registered as Basira Hussain’s. Questioning one of the building’s residents, with the appropriate motivation, had confirmed a woman of the right description living in the right flat, and some further probing had revealed the best possible news – all of them lived in the building. And Tim didn’t.

It was so perfect that she had been suspicious, at first, that it had to be a trap. But she didn’t see how it could be – they didn’t know she was coming, and if they did, how would clustering together help them?

No, this was the work of her God, leaving her a straight and clear path.

She had somebody confirm that everyone was home, sealed the doors… and brought forth Desolation.

\------------------------

  
  


Martin Knew about the fire before he saw it, but not early enough to be useful. He’d barely leapt to his feet and rushed for the door when suddenly, the wall between him and the world outside was…

It had to be fire, it moved like fire, but it was like no fire he’d ever seen. A bright blue that somehow hurt the eyes without providing illumination to the rest of the world, it seemed to burn blistering hot and blistering cold at the same time, like its sole purpose was to extract the energy from anything it touched as quickly as possible, leaving ruin. This was obviously a supernatural attack, and they had plans for supernatural attack; down through the trapdoor to the basement, flee into the tunnels. But that wouldn’t work for a fire.

Because there were other tenants trapped in the building.

Martin burst out into the hall. Around him, so did his neighbours. Mary didn’t bother taking the time to unlock the basement door; while people hammered uselessly on the front door, she simply tore the basement lock right out of the frame and swung the remainder of the door open. “Down here!” she cried.

The residents’ minds were powerful and pliable with fear, and Martin Knew flashes of their state of mind as they rushed past, too indistinct to pin down to specific individuals. Most of them feared the fire a lot more than they feared Mary, and were happy to head to the one place that wasn’t on fire. Some assumed that she was in on it, that she was trapping them down there for some horrible purpose, but the basement was safe for now and the flaming outside was not and even it would be hard to fight against the flow of people, so they let themselves be dragged along. One or two did try to jump through the windows, but the sight of what happened to them as they tried to pass through the fire quickly convinced everyone else not to try it.

Martin didn’t run for the basement. He ran for the stairs. There were people on the upper levels who would need help.

\--------------------------

Mary was experiencing a very strong feeling that she hadn’t had very much experience with, but she was pretty sure she understood what it was. It was fury.

Somebody was attacking her building! Somebody was hurting her tenants! These people were under her protection, in her place, and they were being scared, hurt, killed, and she would not stand for it!

First priority was to protect the people in danger. Martin specifically, and also her tenants. As Martin was charging upstairs, that meant the goals weren’t in conflict; she bounded up after him to help him tear open doors and help those who needed it. With everyone scared of her, she was more useful herding them from behind than hanging around where she wanted them to go, anyway.

Outside, she glimpsed a figure. It was hard to make out through the bright blue flames, but she did her best to memorise what it looked like.

They were going to pay for this.

\----------------------

  
  


As soon as the fire appeared, Daisy and Basira ran for the door. They had to protect Martin.

But the hallway was suddenly full of people, and Mary was opening the basement and yelling for people to go down, and Martin was running in the other direction, up the stairs, the stubborn idiot, and the pair were at a loss as to their priorities for a full three seconds until Mary charged up the stairs after him.

Right. She could take care of Martin better than them, what with her regenerating monster flesh and all. Their best action was to clear this throng of people, and try to get them somewhere safe.

Daisy and Basira dropped through their trapdoor into the basement and moved the wood to reveal the tunnel entrance.

“Everyone!” Basira announced, “it’s easy to get lost down here, so stay together and follow – ”

She should probably have realised that that wasn’t going to work. These weren’t trained police officers with a history of dealing with supernatural threats. They were random people scared out of their minds as their homes burned above them.

People started to bolt into the tunnels.

\-------------------------

  
  


Sometimes, there were strange noises in the tunnels, and Tim was expecting to hear any number of things as he made his way towards the apartment building to use Martin’s microwave. Screaming was not one of those things.

Certainly not the screaming of a lot of people.

He quickened his pace, drawing his axe and jogging down the tunnel. A man carrying a small child on his shoulder ran down the tunnel towards him, caught sight of Tim in Tim’s torchlight, and turned and bolted in the opposite direction.

Fuck! How many people were down here? They were going to get lost! They were going to die!

Dinner was going to have to wait. The Hunt was on.

\------------------------

  
  


Martin didn’t know how long the building could hold together. He and Mary tore their way into apartment after apartment, looking for stragglers. He didn’t know whether it was luck, or instinct, or the Beholding that helped him find the safest path up and down stairs as they herded people toward the basement, but he knew he was sure as hell going to pay for this experience later, if he survived. The skin on his hands and forearms had blistered away in places from heat and cold both, and frost coated his fingernails as he pushed his way through door after door.

That was the last of them, or at least, the last they could find; if anybody had been in the rooms now completely consumed with fire, there was nothing to be done for them.

Mary physically picked up their last rescuee – a young woman who was sobbing hysterically, too panicked to move – and she and Martin thundered down the stairs.

\--------------------

  
  


Tim wondered, distantly, if he should be worried by how fun this was.

The deeper tunnels were dangerous to navigate, but here on the edge, he knew them well. He’d run into Daisy and Basira a few times, each bent to the same task as him – track down anyone wandering too deep and herd them towards and exit. The people climbing out of basements and old pipes over a several block radius throughout London would be terrified and tired, but they would be alive.

The Magnus Institute was going to have _so many statements_ about this event.

\------------------

  
  


Sasha glared at the phone in her hand impatiently.

She’d finally found someone willing to lend her one, and everyone’s phones seemed to be out of service. What the hell? Tim was probably in the tunnels, but they couldn’t _all_ be in the tunnels. She ditched the Dark stone for a while, in case that was interfering – maybe the Eye had decided she wasn’t allowed to use phones without including Eye powers any more. But, no. Still nobody was picking up.

She tried Melanie and Georgie. Their phones went to voicemail, which at least convinced her it wasn’t a ‘her’ problem. They were probably recording for their podcast. She wasn’t sure what she would have told them, anyway; she really needed to talk to Martin, and if she couldn’t call him then they wouldn’t be able to either. There was no point wasting half an hour explaining her apocalypse theory to people who wanted to be involved as little as possible, and had no way of telling it to the people who actually needed to know.

She returned the phone, thanked the stranger, and stormed off towards the bus stop. She was just going to have to go home and tell him herself, using her actual physical mouth, like some kind of caveman. “Not like this is potentially urgent information or anything,” she muttered sarcastically to herself.

\------------------------

  
  


Jude stayed outside long enough to be certain that no one else would try to flee through the flames. The last thing she wanted was to be impatient and let a target slip through her fingers, just to have to track them down again.

Less people tried to flee through the fire than she’d expected. They must be accepting their fates, simply burning alive inside. She strode up to the front door, destroyed what was left of it, and walked inside.

  
  


\--------------------------

  
  


Martin and Mary had very almost made it.

The basement was in sight, and Martin was allowing himself to hope, when their attacker stroke in through the front door. Martin didn’t recognise them, but that meant nothing – it was impossible to make out much but a general shape through the bright-yet-dark flames, through the intensity of the despair that rolled off the figure. Of more immediate importance, though, was that it was going to be almost impossible to get past them and into the basement.

The apartments, with their clever little trapdoors, were already consumed in flames. Martin supposed that the floor might collapse underneath them and drop them down, but he very much doubted that he’d survive that. E needed some kind of distraction or delay or, or weapon, or something; he could see Mary preparing to put down her charge and leap at the figure but Mary wasn’t strong enough, not to fight whatever this thing was.

Martin lashed out with the only weapon he had.

“Who are you?” he demanded, putting every bit of his will behind the question.

Martin did not think of his questioning as gentle at the best of times, but anything he’d ever done was a feather tickle compared to this. He tore the story out of her before she could resist, faster than she could speak, pulling it right into his mind. She stumbled, fell to her knees, blinked hard to clear her vision.

It was enough. Martin and Mary and the woman in Mary’s arms charged past her, into the basement, into the tunnels. Somewhere behind them, they heard the distant sounds of an apartment building, and a small amount of the tunnel network, collapsing.


	134. Chapter 134

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has a plan.

“Anyone care to tell me what the fuck that was about?” Tim asked.

He, Basira, Daisy, Martin and Mary were settled in one of the many little storerooms they’d made in the tunnels to stock spare torch batteries and food and suchlike. Like him, Basira and Daisy were anxious to recheck the tunnels for stray people, but they’d combed the area three times and were pretty sure they’d chased everyone out. He was probably going to be up half the night looking for stragglers anyway. Mary paced across the storeroom entrance, face twisted in an expression of fury he’d never seen on her before; Martin had gone straight for a pen and notebook and was writing with enough speed and force to tear the paper, although Tim noticed that the words were surprisingly legible. He didn’t seem to be aware that the rest of them were still there. At first, Basira had held torch over the page for him, but when she moved the beam away he wrote just as easily in the darkness.

“We were attacked by someone new,” Daisy said wearily. “Got as many people out of the building as we could.”

“They attacked my residents,” Mary snarled. “Killed some of them. They were under my protection.”

“You did everything you could for them,” Basira said. “We all did. Now I suppose we’ve got someone else, probably the weird forest thing by the look of that frost, after Martin, so we need a plan to keep him hidden while – ”

“It’s not about me,” Martin mumbled, apparently back in the real world. His pen had stopped moving, at any rate.

“It isn’t?” Basira asked. “Because, usually it is.”

“Not this time.” He flipped back a chunk of pages in the notebook and handed it wordlessly to Tim.

Tim glanced down. _Statement of Jude Perry, concerning Loss_.

Oh. Huh.

Hmm.

Tim started reading, to learn precisely how he’d royally fucked up.

\-----------------------

  
  


Mary tried to sleep, but it was difficult.

She wasn’t sure whether or not she ever actually slept. She would lie down, and it would look like sleep, and sometime later she’d get up with no memory of what had happened in the meantime. So far as she could tell, this was pretty normal for sleep, except when people remembered dreams. She didn’t know if she’d ever had dreams.

She didn’t need sleep for any biological reason that she was aware of, but she felt like she needed it tonight. There were pieces of her missing, and she needed to do human things. And there were only so many human things that you could do when you were hiding out in an underground cave from a monster that was trying to kill you and your friends. Like sleeping.

It wasn’t the cave itself that was the problem, or the hard stone floor under the folded blankets beneath her. It wasn’t the way that Tim and Daisy and Basira kept getting up at every slight noise to check for danger or track down what might have been some lost resident (there was never anyone there). It was the… well. It seemed ridiculous.

But she was worried that if she went to sleep, she might wake up as someone else.

It was stupid. There was no one else to be, in the cave, and Mary had been pretty firmly embedded in her for awhile. But Mary had been an archival assistant, and the transition to residential manager had been more difficult than she’d let on. Perfectly doable; plenty of people changed careers in their lives. Humans put on new masks all the time, they just didn’t take the old mask off first. But it had been very hard work, to make a space in the world for her friends to be safe, and now that job was gone, suddenly, without preparation. She had her friends, still, but…

This sort of thing was probably a lot easier for humans. Humans lost their jobs all the time, and it didn’t make them feel like they suddenly lacked purpose or identity.

And this Jude Perry, who had dared to hurt her people… she was going to pay.

In the end, Mary gave up trying to convince herself she should sleep, grabbed a torch and read through the statement that Martin had extracted. It was extremely informative, detailing Jude’s life from her early adulthood as an investment banker right through to her thoughts on her current condition. Mary wasn’t too sure that Jude’s logic, about Agnes being made wrong and Jude now carrying the potential they’d saved by hanging her, a new vessel to bring about a Scoured Earth, made all that much sense. It sounded like the deluded ramblings of a heartbroken egotist drunk on the power of fear – but then, most avatar statements did, and their powers still worked. She supposed that the only things that really mattered was that it made sense to Jude, and that the fear was there to draw from – and it certainly was, a few minutes on the internet could convince anyone of a world saturated in the fear of what her human friends called Desolation. News abounded of the diseases and poverty brewing that would take people’s parents, the wars brewing that would take their children, the robots coming to take their sources of income, the economic collapse coming to destroy their savings and assets, the cultural changes coming to take their pride. Enough fear to change a world? Mary had no idea. She didn’t know how to measure something like that, without simply trying and seeing if it worked. Enough fear to make her the strongest monster that Mary had ever seen, strong enough to kill everyone Tim loved? Easily.

And Sasha was out there, an obvious target who didn’t know the danger! Was Melanie a target? Maybe. So she was also in danger. They’d have to be warned; they should’ve thought of that first thing!

Mary shook Martin awake.

“Mm?”

“Do you have your phone? I left mine in the building.”

“No.” Martin rubbed at his eyes. “Why?”

“Sasha and Melanie are still – ”

“Oh, shit!” Martin got up. “Tim should have his, right?”

“He’s doing one of his patrols again. Although he should’ve been back by now; maybe he heard something?”

“Yeah, maybe he – ” Martin’s eyes widened with a sudden realisation that Mary was learning to recognise as supernatural Knowledge.

Then he bolted down the passage.

\----------------------

  
  


Tim was almost at the tunnel entrance when he sensed the people coming up behind him. He could outrun the group; he had a head start. But then they’d follow him up to the surface. And be in more danger, which was what he was trying to prevent.

So he turned to face his friends.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Daisy snapped, yanking the axe out of his hands.

“Going for a stroll.”

“Don’t you fucking dare ‘going for a stroll’ me. Are you really that stupid? Or just that arrogant in your own skills? You were going to, what, sneak off and take her on on your own? With an _axe_?”

“This doesn’t have to involve any of you.”

“Oh, no,” Mary said drily, employing a new level of sarcasm that Tim hadn’t heard from her before. “Why would it involve us. A fire woman who burned our home down and wants to kill us all.”

“That’s the point! If I deal with this now – ”

“You’re not stronger than her, Tim!” Martin said. “Don’t you realise that if you face her directly, you’re going to die?”

The compulsion pulled the answer out of him before he had time to think about it. “Of course I do!”

“So what, you’re suicidal now?”

“No! I’m practical! And stop doing that!”

“How is – it’s not practical to run out there and get yourself killed for no gain!”

“What are you talking about? Of course it is!”

“I don’t…”

“Think, Martin. All of you. Why is Jude here?”

“To kill us.”

“No. _To destroy me_. She doesn’t want to kill me, she wants to take away everything I love. She wants me to feel the fear of her approach, the pain and grief of that loss. Do you have any idea how, how unstable the Desolation is?”

“Well, yeah,” Basira shrugged. “Fire – ”

“Fire doesn’t matter! The Desolation isn’t about fire any more than the Web is about spiders, they’re just… associations that humans build onto them, so they get mixed up in it all, but they’re not the issue itself. When I was with the cult, I played with a lot of fire, but almost none of it was holy; I lost that shortly after the Unknowing because I couldn’t find an appreciation for the Desolation. I couldn’t follow through with it, with the right… motivations. It’s about having something and fearing that it’ll be nothing. It’s about feeding the fire that keeps you warm and knowing that one misstep will burn your house down, about watching your baby sleeping and knowing that after you go to bed it could die in the night and you wouldn’t know, about working half of your whole life to amass a fortune and the other half to defend it, terrified that you’ll lose it. And acting on that fear, taking those things away, is… is such a transient state. It burns, and it’s gone, and its servants have an incredibly short attention span, always having to hunt for new sources. But Jude hates me, personally, for… very understandable reasons, and she’s not going to let go. Not while I’m alive to torment.”

“You think if you die, she’ll lose interest in us,” Basira said.

“I think if I take my own life, she’ll see it as an attempt to outsmart her and kill you out of spite. But if I challenge her, and she gets to beat me? If she kills me in that fight, accidentally or on purpose, proving she was stronger and getting her revenge? There’s no reason for her to have any further interest in you. While I’m alive, I’m an active danger to anyone who makes any connection to me, who seems to have any value to me. But if I face her, one of us will die. And the threat will be removed, at least so far as you’re all concerned.”

“Tim, we’re not going to let you go and commit suicide to protect us,” Martin said.

“Martin, we risk our lives all the time.”

“This is different.”

“It really isn’t. Guys, his isn’t a ‘heroic sacrifice’ thing, it’s just strategy. The reason I can make this choice so easily is because the things I have, the relationships I have with people, are worth more than my own life. So many people aren’t lucky enough to have that.”

Mary grabbed his arm. “I know you were fake dead when we talked about this, so maybe nobody updated you, but we have a rule in this group, and that’s that we’re in it together. We decide these things together, when we can. I’m not saying,” she added quickly when Tim made to interrupt, “that your plan should be off the table, I’m saying that we should brainstorm other options and come to an agreement. Your life is precious to us too, you know. We need to warn Sasha and Melanie that they’re in danger, and then… then we talk through this. Okay?”

“You guys aren’t going to let me out of your sight until we do, are you?”

“You get used to it,” Martin said.


	135. Chapter 135

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew learn important information.

Before getting her job at the Supernatural Horror Collection Depot, Melanie probably would’ve turned off a phone that was ringing at 3am and gone back to sleep. But these days, someone could be dying, so she picked it up. “Hello?”

Tim replied. “Thank goodness, you’re alive! Have you heard from Sasha at all?”

Hmm. Ominous. Melanie got up. “I haven’t. What’s going on?”

“Uh, you might want to get to the Institute, or into the tunnels, or something. A Desolation cultist might try to kill you, possibly.”

Melanie started throwing clothes on at random. “Tim, what the fuck did you do?”

“Nothing! I mean, everything, I majorly fucked up, but in my defense there’s no way I could possibly have predicted this – ”

“ _What the fuck did you do, Tim?!_ ”

“Sacrificed all the most powerful cultists in flame to accidentally create a new Desolation messiah who wants to kill everyone I care about before bringing about the Scoured Earth.”

“Fuck!”

“Yes, you’ve said that many times.”

“Anyone dead yet?”

“We can’t contact Sasha, but with her phone situation that just means she isn’t in the Institute. Also the apartment building burned down but we all got out.”

“Right. I’ll head to the Institute; Sasha will probably go there once she sees your building since it’s the only place her phone works. I’ve got some paperwork to do, anyway.”

“Paperwork? You’re thinking about paperwork?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been just about running the place since Peter took me on as his assistant, and now Peter’s gone. If I slack off, the Institute is affected.”

“And you care because – ?”

“Because I put a lot of work into making that place a convoluted mess that bleeds money where nothing useful ever gets done and if I stop they might have time to accomplish some actual evil. Causing problems on purpose is an important and sacred duty. I’ll call you if I see Sasha.” She hung up.

Killer cultists. Tim had said he’d dealt with these already. Now he was accidentally doing fear rituals? Could you even accidentally do fear rituals? Ugh, whatever. Looked like she was getting to work _really early_. Pity she didn’t get paid overtime.

She’d gotten an email in the middle of the night to inform her that she was no longer Peter Lukas’ assistant. Apparently whoever paid attention to these things while Elias was in prison and on the run had noticed that Peter didn’t actually do anything and he’d been replaced with a new Head of the Institute. She took the time to leave her files as messy as possible and change the passwords and sign out of all the non-personal accounts she used before heading down to the archives. So now she was at work at four in the morning with absolutely nothing to do. Fantastic.

Melanie read up on the Lightless Flame, which filled in half an hour or so, but their database was so damn organised that she didn’t have to waste any time trying to hunt down information or scanning through pages of irrelevant nonsense. Stupid Sasha and her knowledge of how to actually cross-reference information, making it hard to kill time.

Her gaze wandered to the small pile of Gertrude tapes left. They didn’t look remotely inviting, but whatever; someone had to do them. She summoned up the energy to care enough to grab one, stick it in the player, and push play, and began to type.

Like most of Gertrude’s taps, it wasn’t preceded by a statement number or description, just a recording of an event. Melanie left those fields blank for later and began transcribing Gertrude reading from something, that the content quickly revealed to be a page from the ghost book.

Eric Delano… where had Melanie heard that name before?

\--------------------------

  
  


In the tunnels, they talked in circles. Was Sasha okay? Nobody knew. How to contact her? Nobody had any other options. How to track or defeat Jude? Nobody knew. Was Sasha okay? Nobody had seen or spoken to her for a day and a half; should they be worried? Hard to say. How to contact her?

At five in the morning, they decided to head in to the archives. It was the most likely place for Sasha to go, it held all their information, it… well, with the apartment building gone, it felt like the closest thing they had to a stronghold. Tim felt at home in the tunnels, but he was well aware that his companions didn’t. Mathematically speaking, they’d been attacked a lot more often in the archives, and Jude knew about the Institute but presumably not the tunnels, but none of this seemed to matter.

Tim hated being in the archives. It reminded him too much of when he used to work there. His desk was still in there, probably belonging to a different assistant now. That fucking safe he’d bought was still in there.

Melanie was there, too. She was staring very thoughtfully into space, and barely registered them entering. She jumped when they all greeted her.

“You guys need to hear something,” she said.

“Is Sasha – ?”

“I haven’t seen her. But you guys need to hear this. It’s a, a statement by a previous archival assistant named Eric Delano.” She pushed play on the tape player.

When Eric and Gertrude stopped talking and the tape finally ran silent, everyone stared at each other for a bit.

“Well,” Basira said.

“Fucking hell,” Tim said.

Martin said, “If I – ”

“Martin,” Basira said, “if you suggest blinding yourself and seeing if that frees the rest of us I am going to hit you. I am going to punch you with this fist and it is going to hurt. We’ve already had this discussion way too many fucking times.”

Martin, wisely, stayed silent.

“To be honest I think anyone with any kind of spook powers should hold onto them until we deal with Jude,” Tim said. “We can’t afford to make ourselves helpless right now.”

“So what do we do?” Melanie asked. “I mean, what do we have on this cultist, exactly?”

Mary handed over the statement. Melanie read it in silence. When she was done, she raised her brows and said, “Wow, Tim, you super fucked up.”

“There was no possible way for me to know – ”

“I know, I know, I’m just teasing. I stabbed Martin once, nobody’s going to hold a little ‘accidentally superpowered a fire avatar’ over your head.”

“I suggest we leave a note in here for Sasha and move back down into the tunnels,” Basira said. “Jude might show up here and if she does, I’d rather not be. Sasha knows how to get into the tunnels from the office and we can assume that Jude doesn’t.”

“And we should order pizza,” Mary said.

Everyone frowned at her, confused.

“Humans need to eat. None of us are going to leave this place to get breakfast or lunch today, so we order in or you guys have to eat from the food stores in the tunnels. Pizza is psychologically more healthy, because we can have a pizza party, which is fun and promotes team bonding.”

Tim, along with everyone else, stared at her.

“This is your fault,” he told Melanie. “You taught her this.”

“It’s a good idea,” Melanie shrugged. “You can eat garbage tunnel chips if you want, but I want pizza.”

The group then proceeded to discuss their pizza order for twenty minutes, which Tim thought was sort of a waste of time, given the various crises they were trying to deal with. But it wasn’t like any other discussion had brought them any closer to a solution.

While Melanie, Daisy and Martin debated the exact proportion of pizzas that should be ordered with pineapple, Mary tugged on Tim’s sleeve. “Tell me about Agnes.”

“What?”

“In that statement, Jude talks about how you secured her cooperation for helping with the Unknowing by trading a pendant with Agnes’ hair.”

Tim felt himself blushing at her words. The statement had also mentioned, unambiguously, that the initial deal had been to kill Mary. “Yeah?”

“So, I know she loved Agnes, but what impression did you get? About her feelings for her Messiah?”

“You have a plan?”

“I have an idea. I’ll have a plan in a few hours, probably. She endangered my friends and my tenants, and I’m going to kill her.”

“She’s dangerous, Mary.”

“Right. You think she would’ve been capable of killing me if you’d asked her to. But you forget, I’m a lot less vulnerable than you.” Presumably to prove her point, Mary maintained eye contact with Tim while she sank her teeth into the back of her hand, peeling flesh away to reveal tendon and bone, unflinching as blood dripped to the floor, then let the flesh regenerate.

It was unsettling as fuck, but Tim had long ago learned not to react to these childish little tricks. He just raised an eyebrow. “You’re not immortal, though, are you?”

“Nothing is.”

Eventually, pizza was ordered, and everyone retired to the tunnels to discuss plans. Until it came time to actually go and get the pizza from the front desk. Tim volunteered to do it, since he was the only one that Jude wouldn’t want to kill if she showed up, and everyone agreed on the condition that if she did show up, he wasn’t allowed to commit Suicide By Jude.

She didn’t show up. But as Tim accepted the comically high stack of pizza boxes from Rosie, trying to ignore the gaze of the fucking Reception portrait of fucking Jonah fucking Magnus the evil fuck, he caught sight of someone better – Sasha, strolling through the front doors, looking no worse for wear.

“Sash!” He set the boxes back down and bolted over to her, sweeping her into a hug. “We were so worried!”

“Worried?” She frowned. There was something very off about her expression that he couldn’t place. Worry? Stress? Fear? “What happened?”

“You haven’t been home?”

“Uh… no?”

“Jude Perry’s alive and burned down your apartment building. Everyone’s alive, some people are a little burned up.”

“Martin? Was Martin hurt?”

“I think he got a bit burned, but he healed up right away. Took a big ol’ meal of a Perry Statement and, well, spook powers, I guess.”

“But she burned him?”

“Yeah?”

“Where is he? I need to speak to him right away.”

There was definitely something strange in her expression. “You alright, Sash?”

“Yes, everything’s perfectly fine. I’ll explain later.”

“Right. He’s – ” Tim glanced up at portrait on the wall, and froze. He’d figured out what was bugging him about Sasha. It wasn’t her expression.

Her eyes were not the muddy brown he was used to seeing in the face of Sasha James. Instead, they were the clear, bright hazel of Jonah Magnus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Starshower remember that one prediction u made about Sasha becoming head of the Institute


	136. Chapter 136

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has a suboptimal morning.

The security guards in the Magnus Institute, Tim was interested to learn, carried tasers. This made sense, given the number of supernatural attacks; some Hunter leaping forward to rip a woman apart with his bare hands might be dangerous for a security guard to restrain normally, but their muscles succumbed to electricity as easily as anyone else’s.

At least, Tim’s apparently did.

“No, no, there’s no need to call the police,” Sasha – Jonah – insisted. “Tim’s a friend; he just had a bit of a fright. Isn’t that right, Tim?”

“I’m going to kill you,” he snarled from under the weight of the security guard kneeling on his back. He tugged at his handcuffs, but they held firm. “The instant you’re not looking, I’m going to tear you apart with my bare fucking hands.”

“No, that kind of attitude towards the new head of the Institute is hardly conducive to a good work environment, is it?” he said, fluttering Sasha’s eyelashes. “Of course, you don’t actually work here any more, but still. I wanted so badly to break through that glass ceiling, and now I’ve become more successful than I’d ever dreamed! Aren’t you proud of me, Tim?”

“You’re so confident with these guards around, but I have friends, too. When they hear about this…”

“They’ll what, Tim? Did they not explain the consequences, if harm should come to me?”

“I’m not sure they entirely believe them. And if you’re going to k-kill our people anyway…”

“Tim, where’s Martin right now?”

“Fuck off.”

Jonah sighed. He crouched down to look intently into Tim’s eyes. Tim knew this trick; he was reading his mind. He was pretty sure that closing his own eyes wouldn’t stop it. If Jonah could see him, Tim’s mind was a book that was easy enough to open and flip through.

And if Jonah was so single-mindedly interested in Martin’s location, that could only mean bad things.

Tim shunted his weight to the side, managing, luckily, to dislodge the security guard, rolled to his feet and bolted. Not for the archives; he didn’t want to lead Jonah down that trapdoor, and he wouldn’t be able to open it with his hands cuffed behind his back anyway. But there was another tunnel entrance half a block away.

He kept his head down, hoping that the various people staring at the handcuffed man bolting full speed down the street trailing taser wires wouldn’t get a clear shot of his face if any were fast enough to film him. That could make moving about above ground difficult in the future, and the tunnels probably weren’t going to stay secret for long, given how many people he’d herded out of them the previous night.

He found the entrance, slipped underground, and made his way back to the team just as they were debating on whether to send someone to check on him.

“Hey,” he panted, “do either of you ex-cops know how to pick handcuffs?”

“I know I’ve been saying this a lot,” Melanie said as Daisy got to work freeing his hands, “but what the fuck, Tim?”

“Jonah’s back. Didn’t take kindly to me trying to kill him in Reception.”

Martin frowned. “Elias is a wante – oh. He has a new host body, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

They all caught the break in his voice, and gave him their full attention.

“Who?” Basira asked.

Tim didn’t respond. He just rubbed at his wrists and stared at the ground.

“Tim, who is it?”

“It’s Sasha,” he admitted.

Daisy swore quietly.

“Should’ve killed him when I had the chance,” Melanie growled.

“We do need to find a way to kill him,” Basira added, thoughtfully. “There’s the blindness option, and then Daisy and Tim can do it, but we should try to find another way before we jump into it, I think.”

“And let him kill more of us in the meantime?” Melanie snapped.

“He doesn’t need to. He’s got a host that isn’t wanted for murder now.” Basira wiped her eyes. Tim could see how hard she was trying to appear logical, unaffected. He could smell the grief and alarm coming off her in waves.

“After we deal with Jude,” Tim said firmly, “we find some way to make that fucker regret ever trying to become immortal. Sasha _will_ be avenged. Hell, maybe – ah, fuck.”

“What?”

“What’s the bet we’re going to have to protect that arsehole from Jude? If him dying kills you guys, and she knows I was close to Sasha…”

“Then we take Jude down before it becomes an issue,” Mary said firmly. She traded a look with Basira. “I believe we have a plan.”

\-----------------------------

  
  


Sasha sat in her office and rubbed her temples.

That had been exceptionally close. With that accursed stone (meaning that the North Pole trip had paid off, meaning that she had another thing to worry about blocking her Sight now), it had been sheer luck that Elias had even noticed Sasha’s investigations in time to stop her. And now, there would be the paperwork, the transfers, the new account logins, and the not inconsiderable task of adapting to being an entirely new person. Or at least, the world seeing her as an entirely new person.

Given how close the ritual was to completion, it hardly seemed worth the effort. When she was Queen of a broken world, everyone would probably just call her Jonah anyway, under some false assumption that she bothered to maintain any attachments to her previous bodies, even the one she’d been born in. And given that Sasha was female, there would probably be some off-colour jokes from the handful of people uncaring about death enough to make them, because most people cared so much about those kinds of divisions, which had always been baffling to her (although quite useful, when it came to amassing power in the ‘right’ kinds of bodies). All humans were the same when you got under the skin – self-serving, insecure, petty little animals, all holding onto the same sorts of embarrassing memories and ‘deep dark secrets’ about themselves that always turned out to be something boring like a random sexual kink or some mistake they made that killed people or some terrible thing that happened to them that they didn’t want anyone else to know about in case it made people think they were pitiable. They all thought that they were somehow individual, their accomplishments more important, their mistakes more noteworthy, their shames deeper and more worthy of scorn, but it was always just a handful of traits grabbed from the same bag. It was almost comical, how they’d realise she could see into their minds and suddenly panic that she must know the horrible thing and just give her control, not through anything inside their minds, but through their false assumption that it was somehow important.

Any of them, in her position, would watch the world burn for personal gain. If she couldn’t actually see that in most of their minds, well, that was just because some people buried their true selves under so many more layers of denial than others, but Sasha saw no reason to lie to herself.

What she needed now was a good look at her Archivist, just to make absolutely sure she’d counted correctly, to make sure he was ready. And then the rest of the ritual, brief and simple.

And then she would have an eternity to rule a broken world.

\-------------------------

  
  


The group in the tunnels knew, from experience, that the archive workers among them had about a week of absence before they’d have to return to the archives. That meant that, ideally, they’d like to solve their problems within that time, because if Jonah was so keen on seeing Martin as soon as possible it could only be for bad reasons. Moving aboveground, using their four remaining Dark stones, was only marginally safe; Jonah could easily have people out there keeping a regular old eye out for them, although he would probably just wait until they came back to the Institute. But there was always the chance of running into Jude. The tunnels weren’t completely safe, either; Jonah knew them a lot better than any of the group did, and presumably still had that book that could change them. It was best to avoid all contact, for the moment.

In the end, they hired an AirBnB under Georgie’s name and snuck everyone in. If they moved around every couple of days and were careful until they knew exactly where Jude was, they should be okay. So Tim cut his hair, put concealer on his scars, and in general tried to make himself look as different as possible without looking notable before he went shopping.

He felt like he’d scoured half of London before he found what he was looking for, but he wasn’t worried; he knew how to hunt things down. Feet sore and eyes weary, he eventually found it in a random charity shop – the perfect glass jar.

It was just the right size, perhaps three quarters of a litre; plenty of room, but not too big. Someone had etched a beautiful design in the glass around the top third, a twisting pattern of leaves and flowers, and the brass lid had been imprinted with similar, but the bottom two thirds of the glass were clear, so anything inside could be easily viewed. It had probably once half tea bags or something in some old lady’s kitchen; Tim paid for it and took it home, to his home in the tunnels. He was pretty sure Jonah would be at work, rather than skulking around the tunnels, but he was quick, just in case. He contemplated his collection of wax heads and his sword and his growing collection of other various trinkets on his trophy shelf and decided that the jar deserved pride of place, right in the middle. This room would have to be for the trophy shelf only, of course, but that was alright. He tried not to spend too much time doing anything else around the heads anyway.

He definitely wouldn’t want to do anything else in here after he’d scooped Jonah’s eyes out of his friend’s head, and put them in that jar.

There was no need to ‘kill’ Jonah Magnus and put his friends’ lives at risk. He didn’t think he could convince him to kill Sasha’s body, anyway, especially since he had no idea whether or not she was alive in there. It was simpler and safer to simply take the eyes out, find out if his friend was still alive, and let Jonah watch the world as much as he wanted from his creepy Panopticon for all eternity, completely harmless. Let him stare at this stone wall, rather than take any further lives, let him be the ‘beating heart’ of the Institute without being a constant threat to its employees or the world.

His eyes were going to look _so good_ in that beautiful jar, in pride of place among Tim’s trophies.


	137. Chapter 137

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team pursue Jude.

“So you’re telling me you were working right across the road and didn’t see _anything_?” Daisy growled, stepping forward. The woman flinched back, fear spiking. Afraid of the question… she must be involved.

“Daisy,” Basira said.

Daisy glared at her partner. Basira wasn’t stupid; she had to see that this woman was lying, or she wouldn’t be so fucking nervous, which meant sh had information they could use to protect everyone. But Basira just looked back at her sadly.

Daisy whipped around to face the woman they were questioning again.

“Daisy!” Basira said, more sharply. She moved between them and handed the woman a card. “If you do remember anything, please call me. Anything would be helpful.”

The woman fled.

“She’s not going to call,” Daisy growled.

“Well, not now she won’t. I wouldn’t, either.”

“She won’t call because she’s hiding something! If you’d let me question her for longer – ”

“She doesn’t know anything.”

“Then what was she so nervous about, huh?”

Basira just raised an eyebrow at her. Okay. Fair enough.

“You saw the way she looked at you when we came in,” Daisy grumbled. “Racist bitch.”

“Our target isn’t random potential witnesses. Who’s our target?”

“… Jude Perry.”

“Right.”

The pair walked down the street in silence. They didn’t want to be out longer than they needed to. The pulse thundering in Daisy’s ears started to slow, and she saw that she had, indeed, been overreacting. It was getting harder and harder to tell… or maybe it had always been hard, and she’d just never bothered noticing. When she’d overreacted on the Force, people had been there to protect her; had she gotten worse in the years since, or had she always been this way, and never had to restrain herself before?

Basira could always tell. She could rely on Basira’s judgement. And that was a problem in itself, because Basira never used to try to hold her back, so she must have crossed some line to make her do it now. Things always seemed like the right thing to do, in the moment, but…

Having Tim around helped. He was a naive idiot who she constantly had to pull out of danger, but his insufferable idealism had been a wake-up call when they’d started working together. Before she made a call, she always tried to think, ‘would I let Tim see me doing this?’, tried to set a good example. But that was selfish, wasn’t it? His idealism wouldn’t last forever, because she was… infecting him. He was becoming more and more like her. And that Julia of his wouldn’t help, either.

She tried not to feel too guilty about how things had turned out. Tim wasn’t a child, and he was the one who’d approached her and Basira to take down the cult, and when they’d pursued… what was she supposed to do, not teach him to defend himself? But she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she wasn’t like this, he’d be better off, and Basira would be better off, and random potential witnesses they wanted information from would be better off. If she crossed the line, if the scales started to tip the other way, if she found that she was causing more pain and terror and death in the world than she was stopping, would she even notice before she was too far gone to care any more? Would anyone be able to stop her? Would Basira even be able to summon the will to try?

Maybe it was a good thing, how ridiculously dangerous their current plan for Jude was. Maybe Daisy would die a hero before she became a monster.

“What are you thinking about?” Basira asked.

“Nothing,” Daisy replied.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Basira was keenly aware of the tension as Daisy walked beside her. Something was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell her what. She was sure that, back when they’d been police, Daisy hadn’t been this –

No, that was wrong, wasn’t it? Daisy had always been secretive. They’d just both been busy with so many cases, and not seen each other this much, and… and…

And Basira had never asked questions. Whenever it had seemed that Daisy might be… going overboard… she’d turned a blind eye. Had things gotten worse since they’d quit the Force, or was she only just now bothering to look?

They’d exhausted their supply of potential external witnesses to the fire, who might have seen where Jude had gone, but there was one last place to check. Tim had given them Jude’s last known address, and while there was no way the place hadn’t been re-let since her supposed death, there still might be some kind of clue there.

It was a ground floor flat, and a knock at the door produced no answer. Basira picked the lock and the two entered cautiously, careful not to touch anything. They did not want to have the police called on them – that could be pretty awkward. It definitely looked like an actual family lived there, though; several pairs of different-sized shoes at the door, photos on the wall…

“Basira,” Daisy called from a bedroom. From her tone, Basira knew what she’d found, and reluctantly came over.

Yep. A family of four, laid out together on the bed. All very dead. The burns on them very similar to the few patches on her own arms that she’d been unable to avoid completely when Jude had attacked.

Basira tried not to look too bothered. She tried not to think about how she should feel a lot more bothered; probably would, if she hadn’t been seeing spooky shit like this for so many years.

“Well, I guess she’s still staying here,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “We should tell the others.”

\----------------------------

  
  


Melanie pinched the bridge of her nose and kept talking on the phone. “Are you sure you can’t put Ms Dominguez on? Okay, fine. Look, this is perfectly simple – you need money to rebuild your church, the Magnus Institute has money I don’t want them to have, and they could realise I still have account access at any time now and cut me off, so we need to do this quickly. I’m sure you want to deal with this Desolation problem before it becomes a serious problem just as much as we do. Okay. Yes, I can make the money transfer untraceable, it’s fiddly but – okay, have you ever heard of cryptocurrency? Hmm. Right. Can you find one of your people who’s less than forty years old and ask them if they’ve ever heard of cryptocurrency? Look, just… just had Ms Dominguez call me back, alright? We’re kind of on a time limit here – yes, I hope to have an address for you by then.”

Melanie hung up. She’d thought she was done playing secretary with Peter gone, but apparently not.

At least this would be over soon, one way or another.

\----------------------

  
  


Mary was surprised at how normal Jude looked. Her wax skin was a little lumpy and black in spots, where the wax had charred and burned, but they merely looked like a few moles from a distance, and Mary was fully intent on keeping her distance – she didn’t want to be recognised and attacked on the street, especially right across the street from the Institute. She didn’t want to risk having to deal with Jonah as well.

Unremarkable or not, Jude’s position was easy for Mary to track. Other people who walked past the cafe checked that they still had their wallets, gripped their children’s hands, hurried past. Most of them didn’t seem to be aware of where their sudden wariness came from, but the more alert ones knew that the woman clutching the cold cup of coffee was to blame, and rushed past her, and those spikes of fear at the unknown woman making them feel worries they didn’t understand spiked high in Mary’s awareness.

Mary didn’t stick around any longer than she needed to. They had Jude’s current home, and her current location; that meant they could predict her route, and that was all they needed. She went to find Tim.

\----------------------

  
  


Jude spotted Tim immediately, and almost laughed.

Did he think he was being sneaky? That she wouldn’t notice him following her? What was he going to do, attack her? The fool hadn’t been strong enough for her even before her rebirth; that was why he’d had to resort to explosives in the first place.

She pretended not to notice him. Maybe he thought he could take her unaware, and she had no reason to make him think otherwise. It was good that he was here; it told her a lot. She had been pretty sure that some of her targets had escaped her initial assault, and now she was certain; Tim had lost someone, he was practically bleeding grief, but there was fire in him yet. There were still things he was holding on for. People she still had to eliminate.

He could watch her burn his friends as they left the Institute for the day.

Jude stayed until the sun started to set, and so did Tim. Either his friends weren’t at work that day, or they weren’t going to come out while she was there. No matter. Let Tim believe he could protect them; it would make it all the more devastating for him to learn that he couldn’t.

She began the walk home. He followed, at a distance, apparently thinking that she wouldn’t notice, that he was invisible. Pathetic. It almost didn’t seem worth destroying his world.

But she would. He had destroyed hers, after all, and should have the favour returned.

Then, about halfway home, her tail disappeared. Weird. He just ducked into an alley, and didn’t emerge.

Curious, Jude turned around to see what was wrong. She approached as quietly as she could. There was some kind of whispered argument going on.

“I can take her, Daisy, I don’t need to be fucking babysat – ”

“Well apparently you do, because we look away and you’re out here trying to pick a fight with – ”

Jude stepped into sight. The three people in the alley all froze.

“Run!” Tim shouted to Basira and Daisy and leapt at Jude, drawing a knife. It was almost funny, how pathetic it was. She grabbed his wrist and let the Desolation seep into his bones as she sealed off the blind alley with cold fire, trapping the two women inside.

“This is between you and me, Jude,” Time growled.

“Yes,” she said. “It is. And I don’t think you need your toys any more.” She waved her free hand to draw forth more power, obscuring the entire mouth of the alley with the blue flames of Desolation so that there would be no possible avenue of escape, and let the fire start to move back. Tim was struggling in her grip, openly begging her for mercy now, and she just laughed at his desperate fear. Yes, this was what she needed, this was what she sought. To bring this to the entire world, to let her God consume it whole.

When the women started screaming in pain, Tim broke. He tore his arm free of her grip, not through superior strength but by simply sliding of out of the ruined skin of his forearm under her hand like a fragile, bloody glove, and slammed his knife into her wax body again and again with pure, incoherent fury. She let him, let whatever part of him was still aware enough to understand feel the brief spark of hope that he might, in some way, be able to hurt her.

Then the women stopped screaming. And Tim stopped.

The fight in him vanished, all at once, like something inside had simply decided that there was no point in continuing. He dropped the knife. Just to be sure he wouldn’t run, Jude put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him to his knees; he didn’t resist.

“Go on then,” he said tonelessly. “Do it. Kill me.”

“Kill you? Why on earth would I do that? No, Tim; you’re going to see me take away everything you love.”

“You just did. Those two escaped the apartment fire only to die in some stupid fucking alley.”

“Trying to protect you! Don’t forget that part. They were only there because you were following me.”

“Hm. You’ve taken everything. So kill me.”

“Perhaps I have taken everything for now. But I don’t think so. You’re going to go out into the world, Tim, and you’re going to find something else to love, so I can take that, too. Perhaps you might resist, be careful to keep to yourself, thinking that you can keep everyone safe through distance, but eventually you’ll let your guard down. You’ll think I must be dead, or at least not able to follow you any more under whatever assumed name you’ve adopted in some remote location, you’ll fill it with people and places and pets and property that you love, and I’ll come and take it away. And then we’ll do it again. Until you die.” She tried hard not to burn him as she tilted his chin upwards to kiss him on the forehead, and she must have succeeded at least somewhat, because he didn’t flinch at the pain. “Run along, now.”

“Jude,” an achingly, impossibly familiar voice called from the alley. “Oh, Jude; look at you. I’m so happy for you.”

Jude stared as the impossible happened. A woman stepped out of the fire in the alley, looked at her, and smiled.

“Agnes,” Jude breathed. “How?”


	138. Chapter 138

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agnes.

Playing Agnes was _hard_.

Sometimes, Mary missed the days when she could just pick an identity and let the humans around her shape her. It was more difficult to, to plan like this, to balance on the edge of fear, to be a sailboat in the winds of human terror rather than a leaf getting dragged along by it, picking your direction and maneuvring so that the wind would push you in the right way. There were so many factors at play here, so many things to keep track of.

It probably helped that she’d so recently lost the apartment building. All she really had for the moment was her friends, and helping her friends was sufficient motivation. But none of this was quite what she was for. Taking the exiting identities of others wasn’t really in her wheelhouse, and she couldn’t be Agnes anyway, because she couldn’t be anyone but Mary any more. It was a fake mask over a real mask, like a human actor would wear, and that considerably increased the chances of discovery.

It didn’t help that they’d had so little of Agnes to go on. If they’d still had Sasha, they might have been able to find more, but they’d been reduced to tracking down her old boyfriend and seeing if he’d kept any pictures or voice recording out of sentimentality, meaning that the data they had for her to base her performance on was pretty sparse. And to sell the illusion, she had to appear unharmed by the flames, meaning that quite a lot of her attention was on regenerating her own skin as she walked forward, threw her arms around Jude, and kissed her.

“How?” Jude asked again.

“I told you I’d come back,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be so soon. I thought we’d have to build up power and I’d have to be born all over again, but you, Jude… look at you. Look at the power you hold. Together, we will bring about the Scoured Earth; together, we will rule a free and fiery world, and none will be able to touch us. We’re going to be safe and together forever, Jude. Aren’t you happy?”

Jude didn’t look happy. She had one hand pressed to her chest, her eyes closed. And she was weeping.

“I understand now,” she whispered.

\----------------------

  
  


Jude understood now.

She had lost everything, it wasn’t… it wasn’t supposed to come back. The lump of gold in her chest burned with a kind of heat that she couldn’t resist, that still pained her as it fought to pull free; hope, a thread of damning, toxic hope for the future that Agnes was describing. That would be nice, to have a world to share with her beloved. To have a beloved to share with her world. But to think like that would make her weak. Would undo her. Why was her God doing this to her? She was on track to give him the world, wasn’t she? Why bring back Agnes? Did it want a test of loyalty? Did it want her to kill Agnes again?

No, no. Jude knew the truth. She understood, now.

Agnes had been made wrong. She had been made by children, with an imperfect understanding of the Desolation, and corrupted by that man from the coffee shop. She was the Messiah, was always meant to be the perfect one, but she was infected. Jude couldn’t do her job, wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t worthy; but she could heal Agnes. She could give her the power she needed, set her back on the right path to attaining the perfection that was hers by right.

Jude pulled Agnes in for another passionate final kiss. Then she pushed her away. And she gave Agnes the same gift that she had given Gretchen, all those years ago.

Laughing, Jude Perry spread her arms wide and lit herself on fire.

\-----------------------

  
  


Mary kept up the act of distraught screaming and begging until Jude was very definitely a black smear on the footpath, then turned to Tim. He had had the sense to get out of the range of Jude’s little inferno, and now stared at her with a quiet fury.

“You were too late,” he spat. “You were supposed to come in sooner! Daisy and Basira – ”

“Are alive. Come on, let’s get them out.” She headed into the burned alley and started pulling apart the melted remains of a metal skip. In the bottom stood a wooden crate, completely undamaged by flame; Mary pulled the lid off and reached down an arm to help Basira out of the pool of darkness inside.

“That crate is awful,” Basira gasped, staggering out. “I’m never getting in there again.”

“You planned this,” Tim said accusatorily, helping a trembling Daisy out. “You two planned this and let me think you were dead.”

“Had to,” Basira said. “Sorry. We had to make the whole ‘Agnes resurrection’ thing as believable for Jude as possible and she just wasn’t gonna believe it without a fiery sacrifice. We knew you’d convince her that we were the last two left, in a bid to protect the others, so that made it nicely convincing.”

“So you lied to me and let me think you were de – ?!”

“You mean like a certain someone after the Unknowing?”

Tim shut up and pressed his lips together.

“We needed Jude to be fully convinced they were dead,” Mary explained apologetically. “There was no guarantee you’d be able to act it as well as the real thing, and we didn’t know whether or not she could sense fear and grief, so it was best to give her the real thing.”

“Glad I could help,” Tim said sourly. He checked over his friends, then went to inspect the mark on the ground that was all that remained of Jude, as if to ensue himself that she was really gone.

“You two were in more danger than us,” Basira pointed out. “She could’ve killed Tim once she’d thought he’d lost everything, or not believed that Agnes might come back. The statement Martin took was very thorough, but there was a real chance we were wrong.”

“She definitely can’t come back from this, right?” Tim asked. “I mean, I was certain she was dead the last time.”

“If she comes back from that, honestly, I just give up,” Basira said. “She’s literally a mark on the ground. Either she’s dead or she’s completely unkillable.”

“Now that this danger’s sorted,” Daisy put in, “what about Jonah? I don’t know what he’s so keen to see Martin for, but it can’t be good news.”

“Could be nothing,” Basira shrugged. “Just making sure his Archivist is okay.”

“Could be nothing. But I don’t think we should chance it. We need a plan to remove that threat as quickly as possible.”

They headed back to the others. They had some planning to do.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Basira wished they’d done more research.

Specifically, she wished they’d looked deeper into the whole ‘staying away from the Institute’ thing. What was the specific thing that caused people to become sick? Was it not doing nay work for the Eye, not furthering its goals in small ways? Or was it physical distance from the building? Could they bring work with them and disappear indefinitely? Could they spend an inactive hour in the Institute every week and then vanish once more? They knew that they could stay away longer on official leave; did that work the other way, too? Could Jonah do something bureaucratic to make them sick faster, to force them back sooner?

Too many unknowns. They were just going to have to do the best they could, and deal with any problems as they arose.

“Okay,” she said, pacing the room. “So, to sum up our plans. I’ll go in with Martin in the middle of the night, so he can read a statement and, and reset his work clock, or whatever. Daisy will send Martin and Mary to one of her safehouses and not tell the rest of us where he is; that way, so long as Daisy stays away from the Institute, Jonah can’t read his locations from any of our minds, so Melanie and I can return to work, and Daisy and Tim can do their thing and get us a way of dealing with Jonah that hopefully doesn’t involve us blinding ourselves and living under assumed names for the rest of our lives. You’ll have about a week before Martin starts to get sick, and we don’t know how long after that until he dies, so we gotta work fast.”

“Great,” Martin muttered, head resting on the table. “Fantastic plan.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Basira asked. “You don’t need – ?”

“No, no, I got plenty from Jude. Those Dark stones are just really disorienting.”

Basira nodded. All of them had a right to be in a sour mood. They hadn’t had time to mourn Sasha, and they had no idea how much danger they night be in.

“You two are going to be in danger,” Tim pointed out. “You know that, right? Jonah has no reason to kill you, but he can do things to make you wish you were dead. He could do a lot to your mind, to try to make you tell him where Martin is, if he thinks it’s important to find him.”

“Might not be important,” Basira said. “We might be overreacting.”

“Or we might not be. When we met in the Institute it was the only thing he cared about.”

“We won’t know where he is, so no matter what sick garbage he tries to – ”

“He doesn’t need to get the information from you. He just needs to see if he can hurt you enough that Daisy will come and talk to him to protect you. It doesn’t sound like much of a threat, but the, the quality of the stuff he can project, the rawness of it…” he glanced at Melanie. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“It probably won’t come up,” Melanie said, avoiding his gaze.

“Do you have a gameplan for if it does?”

“Yeah. Punch him and run away.”

“Right.” Basira stood up. “It’s nearly midnight. Martin and I should go in for an hour or so so we can get him and Mary on the road. Then those of us who have homes can finally get back to them.”

“Just me, then,” Melanie said. “Since the rest of you are all homeless now.”

“Hey, the tunnels are a perfectly good home!” Tim protested.

“That sounds like something a homeless guy would say.”


	139. Chapter 139

It was midnight. Nobody was going to be in the Institute at midnight.

Nevertheless, Martin felt a bit nervous as he settled in the office and put a tape in the recorder. Basira was right outside at her own desk, typing something up and keeping an eye out for threats. Martin started to read.

The statement washed over him as always, loosing his tongue and carrying him through the experiences described. When he finished, he clicked off the recorder and looked up to see Sasha – Jonah – watching him from the doorway, looking smug.

“Why are you still here?” he demanded, drawing a knife that Tim had given him.

“I could ask you the same question – it really is an absurd hour. Obviously, I wanted to see you. You look well. I was so worried, after what Tim said about Jude stalking you.”

Was that all he wanted? Unlikely. “What do you want?”

“To make sure you’re alright. As I just said. Do you know how hard it would be to replace you?”

“You don’t seem to have had any problem replacing Elias!”

“Don’t pretend to care about a man you never met.”

“It’s not _him_ I – ”

“Okay,” Basira said, suddenly appearing behind Jonah and pressing a knife to Sasha’s throat, “fun’s over. It’s late and we should all get home.”

“Come now, Basira, there’s really no need for that,” Jonah said. “I was just checking in on our dear friend Martin, here.”

“You’ve checked in on him. He’s fine. Time to go.”

“No time for pleasantries?”

“No.”

“Basira, wait.” Martin stood up. “If he’s already here…”

“This really isn’t safe, Martin,” Basira said.

“I don’t care.” He looked Jonah directly in the eyes and put ll the force he could muster into the question. “Why Sasha? You had to have other candidates. Why take her?”

Jonah closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Honestly? Convenience. And I should point out that you’re being quite rude right now, Martin.”

“I don’t care. What do you mean, convenience?”

“She was there. She was an Institute employee with the history and qualifications that wouldn’t make it implausible for her to take Elias’ position – odd, yes, but none of the appointments of Institute had have made complete sense; odd choices are practically a tradition at this point. And, of course, she was so incredibly isolated. No real friends or family who’d notice, except for your little group who already know about me. Isn’t that plenty of reason? And before you get all indignant, Martin, allow me y point out how selfish you’re being –you’re upset because he happened to be your friend. Would you be this upset for another – ” He made a choking sound, courtesy of Basira’s knife.

“Stop talking,” she said. “You answered the question, now shut up. Martin, we should go. He could be up to something in, in your brain, or something. You, out of the archives, right now.”

“Fair enough.” Jonah retreated from the doorway, and Basira let him go. “Take care of yourselves, Martin, Basira,” he called as he left the archives. “You’re both such valuable assets to the Institute. It would be a shame to lose you.”

“Did he hurt you?” Basira asked Martin.

“No.”

“Did he read your mind?”

“Uh, maybe? How would I be able to tell? I, I asked him what he wanted and he said he really just wanted to make sure I was okay, so…”

“Right. I’m sorry he got past me. I, I went to fetch a file, I was away for fifteen seconds at most – ”

“Not your fault. He was probably standing outside the door and waiting for you to leave. Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”

\----------------------

  
  


Sasha practically skipped back up to her office. She’d been operating on far too little sleep for a ‘new’ Institute head still trying to prove to her staff and donors that she could do her job, but it had been important to get a good, thorough Look at Martin and make absolutely sure that he was ready.

And he was. He’d been marked by all fourteen powers. Some deeper than others, but all were there. He was ready. She was ready. The ritual was almost complete.

It was time to print out that statement she’d typed up.

\-----------------------------

  
  


“So he really did just want to make sure he didn’t need to get a new Archivist?” Melanie asked.

“Apparently,” Martin shrugged.

“I don’t like it,” Daisy said. “I think we should send you away anyway. Just in case.”

“Wherever we send him, he might be attacked,” Tim said. “It’d be better to have him near us, right? Give him as much backup as possible. Anyway, he might be able to help us take down Jonah. He’s probably the only one of us Jonah wouldn’t kill without a second thought.”

“Might kill on the third thought, though,” Basira said. “He’s valuable, not irreplaceable.”

“Then we be careful,” Tim shrugged. “Not like we’re all going to come out of this alive, anyway.”

Martin watched Tim carefully. He remembered this kind of despondent recklessness from when Tim had been trapped as an archival assistant. He seemed to do much better when he had a purpose, so amybe he’d be able to keep it together until they resolved the Jonah problem. Or maybe he’d get too reckless and get himself killed. He had been close to Sasha. Sasha…

Martin tried not to think too much about it. There would be time to grieve later. Time to grieve when they’d taken Jonah down.

\-------------------------

  
  


Tim had expected “Sasha” to have moved into some glorious Victorian mansion or something the minute Jonah stole her body, but apparently you don’t survive two and ha half centuries without some common sense. Jonah, clearly aware that he was in danger no matter what he said about his death meaning their deaths, had rented a small apartment barely a block from the Institute itself which, given the location, would probably cost as much as a mansion out in the country anyway. A quick look while he was at work revealed a security system too thorough for Tim to want to get too close to, lest some complicated alarm and hidden camera system land him directly in prison, and sturdy metal bars over the windows, leaving no easy way to break in. Tim joked darkly that Jonah was probably really missing his cosy prison cell, but the purpose of these measures was clear – there were Hunters after his eyeballs.

Tim didn’t know if Jonah knew he planned to pluck his eyes out, or simply thought he’d eventually snap and try to kill him outright. He supposed that the defenses against either were pretty much the same.

He stood a street away with Daisy and watched Jonah walk to work. “We could get a van,” he suggested. “Not Melanie’s, we wouldn’t want to implicate her in the crime, but we could steal one. Simply drive up and drag him into the van and drive off. What’s he gonna do? Sasha’s arms have basically no muscle.”

“He wouldn’t be walking about so fearlessly alone like this if he didn’t have some kind of spooky magic defense against that,” Daisy pointed out. “We should make sure we know exactly what we’re up against before we do anything. This looks way too easy for someone who’s survived this long.”

“Hmm. Hey, you know guns. Can you use a sniper rifle?”

“What?”

“A sniper rifle. You could tale out his knees and elbows. Put him in hospital resting up a good long time. It’d be just like having him in prison.”

“Tim, you… you know how different a handgun and a sniper rifle are, right?”

“They’re both guns.”

“Oh, god.”

They watched in silence for a few seconds before Daisy ventured, “Tim?”

“Hmm?”

“Why couldn’t you join the Lightless Flame?”

“What do you mean?”

“When… the other day, you told us you’d tried to join, to become what they were, but you couldn’t hold onto it. Why not? It seems pretty straightforward. Dangerous, but…”

Tim thought about that for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to explain. “Did I ever tell you about my brother?”

“Yes. Danny, right? You said he was killed by a monster.”

“Grimmauldi. The, the Stranger clown thing. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time – just bad luck – and they, they made me watch. Or maybe not made me, but I was too scared to…” He swallowed. “Anyway. That’s why I got into paranormal research; for revenge. And I got it. And it… it wasn’t as cathartic as I’d thought it would be, you know? I’m very happy I did it, I love that that evil fucker is dead, but it didn’t fix anything, and I thought at first that I wasn’t doing it right, that I should’ve taken everything from that fucker, made it suffer instead of a clean kill, taken everything from it bit by bit and let it understand the inevitability and depths of its loss; make it feel like I had. That’s what I was like when the cult found me.”

“Sounds pretty Desolation to me.”

“Yeah. But the high of revenge is temporary. Either you go further that way or you go the other way, and I… I tried, I really did. I tried to take joy in destruction, but all I could ever think about was Danny. About how heartbroken he would be if he’d ever learned that that was his legacy; creating another monster out there explicitly doing to others what had been done to us. Sometimes I would get the urge, to just go out there and make other people feel what I’d felt, make the world feel it and understand, but I could never go through with it. I could never stop thinking that my brother deserved better than being reduced to my excuse to make the world a worse place. The justification I kept landing on was that I was making the world a better place. I wasn’t out there to destroy; I was out there to rid the world of dangers. And a corrupt motive like that either gets burned out of you, or burns you alive, in the Desolation. Like hell was I going to let it get burned out of me.”

“Do you think it’s corrupt for us, too? O you think we can still do this, and make the world a better place?”

“We seem to be doing alright so far.”

“So far.”

“Why are you asking me, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me this stuff?”

“Ha. I suppose so.”

Tim eyed Daisy. Something had been off about her since the Jude Perry takedown. She seemed… shaken up. He’d thought maybe she wasn’t confident Jude was dead, and was keeping an eye out for her, but she didn’t seem to be considering Jude as a possibility in any plans. It couldn’t have been the fire or darkness or high risk of death that had gotten to her – she’d dealt with all of those things just fine, multiple times.

Tim’s phone rang. He picked up. “Hello?”

“Tim,” Melanie said. “Where are you? Are you in public?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Get somewhere hidden right away.”

Tim wasn’t an idiot; he wasn’t going to waste time standing about in public questioning her. He headed for the nearest tunnel entrance, waving for daisy to follow him, and on the way asked, “Why? What’s going on?”

“Are you watching the news?”

“Um, no?”

“You’re going to have to stay hidden. You, Basira and Daisy are all over the news. The police are looking for you. They’re saying you’re serial killers.”


	140. Chapter 140

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the run.

“Vampires? Sorry, Melanie, I don’t believe this one at all. Fucking vampires?”

“Seems real enough to me, Georgie. We have a few reports like this on vampires at the Magnus Institute, you know, where people go to tell about their supernatural encounters? And the reports are always like this – the silence, the telepathy, the general mannerisms. Which isn’t really common in vampire pop culture, right? So these people all saw the same thing. Call ‘em vampires or don’t, who cares.”

“You’re probably going to get some fakes now that we’ve aired this story.”

“Doesn’t matter. We can tell the fakes. And we can tell the fakes you send us for this podcast, too, so stop sending us your creepypasta shit in the hopes of getting it read on air. It won’t work. As for the vamps out there, I’m gonna start carrying a lighter and some spray deodorant – makes a great impromptu flamethrower. Keep an eye out for silent strangers when other people think they’re talking, guys – it might be vampire telepathy!”

“But also, don’t just go around lighting strangers on fire. Even if they’re quiet. We do not want to be blamed for a trend of weird paranoid arsons. Anyway, here’s ‘Did It Hurt When You Clawed Your Way Out Of Hell,’ by Anybody’s Game, and my cousin slipped me five extra pounds to let you know they have merch available on their website. I looked and it sucks, but five pounds is five pounds.”

\-------------------------

  
  


“Technically,” Basira pointed out, pacing the tunnel, “we are serial killers.”

“That’s incidental,” Tim said, straightening up his wax head collection. “Jonah did this. He wants us out of the way so we can’t rip those fucking eyes out of Sasha’s head and free her.”

“You really think she’s still alive?”

“Probably not. But until I’m _sure_ , we should give her every chance, right?”

“This your Jonah jar?” Daisy asked, appraising his shelf.

“Yep.”

“Hmm. Looks nice. Never picked you for an interior decorator.”

“Okay,” Basira said, “what have we got here? We can leave town, regroup somewhere else, but…”

“But that’d leave Martin a lot less defended, unless we bring him along. And you and Martin need to go to work regularly,” Daisy said.

“Okay, sure, but we were prepared to deal with that anyway, when we were planning to send Martin to a safehouse. Why don’t we all just skip out for a while? We’re not sure it’s physical proximity that does the whole ‘staying well’ thing. It might be actually working, so if we take files with us and email our work back to Melanie… Melanie’s defintiely safe, right?”

“Nobody’s safe,” Tim said bitterly. “But Melanie doesn’t seem worried for her safety. She’s not the Archivist and he hasn’t made her wanted for several murders, so…”

“He might still torture her for information,” Daisy reminded them. “Like you said last time, her not knowing any doesn’t matter. If he thinks one of use will come back to protect her…”

“I don’t think he will,” Basira said. “He might, but… but Tim, you and Melanie had to push him pretty far before he pulled out the mind powers on you. If he just wants us out of the way so we don’t try to kill him, then us all leaving town is probably fine on his end. He knows that Martin and I have to come back, and if he doesn’t want to have to replace Martin, I think he’s more inclined to leave us alone than send something after us and risk getting him hurt.”

“You say that like he didn’t bury Martin and Jon in the tunnels that one time,” Daisy pointed out. “And he still is our primary candidate for the meat attack, right?”

“Maybe,” Basira said. “A lot of our previous assumptions were based on the premise that Jonah and Peter were working together, not competing. Peter tricked Melanie into attacking Martin; maybe Peter sent the meat people, too, trying to off Martin as some part of… whatever the hell they had going on with the Panopticon bet.”

“So we basically have nothing concrete to go on except Jonah’s assurance under compulsion that he just wanted to make sure Martin was okay, and the fact that he’s got us all wanted for murder,” Daisy said. “Great.”

“Technically, we’re not even certain he’s the one who told the police about that,” Basira said. “But I think it’s a pretty reliable assumption.”

“You guys were police for ages,” Tim pointed out. “Maybe they’ll understand?”

“No, it just means they’ll be a lot more thorough in their cleanup,” Daisy said. “They don’t like things getting messy. They don’t like people who leave a trail, and they definitely won’t like if our trail leads to things we… things I did when we were still police. It looks bad for them. These murders will probably lead them to the wax museum bombing, and to earlier messes, and they’re going to want to sweep the whole thing away. Whoever they send after us will be Sectioned and will be the kind of people they think can stand up against me. Meaning that if we’re caught, our chances of getting as far as an actual trial aren’t very high.”

“Love knowing we can trust the boys in blue to uphold justice,” Tim said bitterly.

“You’re standing in front of your secret underground serial killer trophy wall,” Basira reminded him. “It’s not a fantastic look.”

“That’s beside the point!” If it wasn’t for Jude, they could simply hide out in the tunnels. As it was, Tim was pretty sure the police would’ve received at least a dozen calls by now from residents of the destroyed apartment building, reporting one of those scary serial killers on the news chasing then through a network of tunnels until they, luckily, managed to escape into the sunlight.

They’d probably get blamed for that fire, too, come to think of it. And some of the people from the building would probably recognise that Daisy and Basira had lived there… had they seen them with Martin or Mary? Were the police going to look to question them?

Maybe it was better for them all just to get the hell out of there.

\-------------------------

  
  


“Are you o – I mean, I’d like to know if you’re okay,” Martin said to Mary as they waited for the train.

Mary didn’t know how to respond to that. “I’m fine,” she said. “It took a lot out of me, pretending to be Agnes, and all the fire and everything, but I’ll get myself back on track.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Uh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. Um, could… I’d like to know what’s wrong, if there’s some way for me to help.”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t think a human can understand.”

“I’m willing to try.”

“It’s just, it’s hard to… things are changing very fast. I managed to adapt after quitting the archvies, but then the building was taken from me so fast, and I had to, I had to put on a new mask to deal with Jude and I… I’m scared, I think.”

“Scared?”

“Of not being a real person like you. Everything keeps changing, and that changes who I am, which just means I’m not anything at all. And I always knew that was true because nobody is anything, but it… didn’t used to scare me until I started believing otherwise.”

“And you think humans don’t get that? Mary, nobody knows who thgey are, and everyone changes all the time when things around them change.”

“So people really aren’t real.”

“If you want to use a really unhelpful definition of ‘real’, I guess not? But I don’t think that’s a good way to think about it. Just because things change doesn’t mean they were never real. And if you change faster than us, or different than us, why does that matter? I think all my friends being different is really interesting.”

“That’s because there’ a thing inside you that likes to Know horrible things.”

“Hypocrite! I saw the way you looked at that ticket attendant. I know you smiled at her with your teeth wrong on purpose.”

“She was having a boring day. Now it’s a less boring day. I did her a favour!”

“Ha, right.”

\-----------------------------

  
  


The safehouse that Daisy had picked was, strictly speaking, too small for five people, but it was isolated, and she considered that to be rather more important. The ‘road’ leading to the stone cottage was barely a dirt track, suitable for bikes and horses but dangerous for cars, and the nearest village was a thirty minute walk away. The cottage had power, and the rainwater tank was full, but no internet or phone.

“If you want to make a phone call, there’s a pay phone in the village,” she told everyone. “The library has a computer with internet if we need to email things to Melanie, but I think we should stay offline for as logn as we can get away with, just in case.” She braced herself for the arguments of pampered Londoners, but was greeted with only silence. A glance at her friends’ faces pleasantly surprised her – Basira, of course, was ready to deal with whatever conditions she had to, and was skimming the cottage in a calculating way. Mary mostly looked curious. Tim was actually grinning, surveying the vast, hilly countryside more than the house itself, and Martin looked like he’d just learned that fairytales were real and walked into one.

“It’s so quaint,” he breathed. “It’s like every cottagecore Pinterest board ever made. Can we make bread here?”

“You can make bread anywhere,” Basira said, puzzled. “The ingredients aren’t hard to come by.”

“I’m going to grow a sourdough starter,” he said, heading for the cottage.

“Is this part of your ‘retro’ thing?” Basira called after him, but he didn’t answer. More quietly, she said, “Nerd.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. She’d been worried about having to herd a pack of overgrown toddlers away from the village all the time, trying to keep them isolated enough to at least be difficult to find. Apparently, that wasn’t going to be a concern.

  
  



	141. Chapter 141

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a cottagecore AU now.

“I can’t believe you guys are all out there living the isolated cottage dream without me!” Melanie complained on the phone. “Is there a vegetable garden?”

“Not any more, the place has been abandoned for years. There’s a massive patch of weeds where a garden used to be.”

“If you get that up and running before we have a chance to get our vegetable garden started, I’m gonna be so mad.”

“Hey, if you two want to come live in our tiny cottage with no internet, no one’s stopping you.”

“I wish. You know you need someone in the Institute though, and Georgie would never go for it. We have to stay on top of things with the podcast taking off. I saw someone down the street wearing an Anybody’s Game shirt yesterday.”

“Your cousin’s band? Good for them!”

“No, no, you don’t get it. The band is objectively terrible.”

“So…?”

“So, people are using the band merch to identify each other as podcast listeners.”

“Doesn’t the podcast have merch?”

“Not yet, but that’s not the point. It’s like a, a pretend secret thing I think, like they’re sending underground messages to each other. The kind of thing you’d expect creepypasta teens to be into. A secret club.”

“Teens like that kind of thing? Pretend secret clubs?”

“I guess? It’s good for us, is my point. If they play into the underground thing, even if it’s just a game. Some of them are probably treating it as a joke, but some of our listeners have had genuine encounters, and they’re not the kind of people to go to the Magnus Institute. They can see each other, and have a network that treats their experiences as real and valid, that can only help. We can’t leave, we’ve got too much to do here. How are things going there? You’ve got enough statements?”

“You gave us a literal box full of real statements. I’m fine for awhile.”

“I just grabbed one of Sash… one of the boxes off the shelf. I don’t know how she organised the unrecorded ones, whether they’re by date or category or whatever. It might just be a box full of meat stuff or something.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine. Thanks Melanie.”

“Be safe, alright?”

“Hey, you’re the one still at the Institute. He hasn’t…?”

“I haven’t even seen Sash – ”

“Jonah.”

“Jonah, at all. Most people leave me alone, actually, so it’s pretty peaceful.”

“Is that a problem? What with the whole…?”

“It’s fine. I’ve got Georgie, and you guys, and, and my therapist is very happy about the attention the podcast is getting, says it can be a nice sort of transition into being more social so long as the community isn’t toxic. Treats me like I’m made of glass sometimes; I’ve had shitty fans before. But the Institute is… fine. I’m the one who got everyone to leave me alone with the whole Peter thing, so I can’t really blame them, can I? Anyway, how are you feeling? Not sick?”

“It’s been less than two days, Georgie.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got all that spooky eyeball power, so I was worried it might work on you faster.”

“We’re fine. Everyone’s fine.”

“Right. Good. Hope we can sort all this before it becomes a problem. Good luck, Martin.”

“You, too.” Martin hung up the phone and caught up with Basira and Tim, who were loitering outside. Nobody except Martin was happy about the idea of Martin going into the village by himself, apparently worried he’d be kidnapped again the moment they looked away even in a safehouse in another country, but since his four potential bodyguards consisted of three wanted serial killers and an inhuman monster who creeped everyone out as a matter of course, there wasn’t really anyone to send with him who didn’t risk making his presence more attention-getting and recogniseable. Basira had argued that a bunch of foreigners moving into an abandoned cottage was going to be attention-getting to the small town no matter who they were, and the group had settled on an uneasy compromise, where Basira and Tim would disguise themselves as inconspicuously as possible and escort Martin down to the village, then just sort of try to stay out of the way and not be noticed while he did the talking and actually bought things.

This went terribly. Strangers seemed to get uneasy when Martin looked at them for any length of time. He’d noticed this before, but usually put their weird behaviour down to the near-constant presence of Mary – apparently, no, it was him, too. Probably not a fantastic sign. Was this what Tim had meant when he said he looked how he did in the dreams? Tim and Basira tried to stay quiet and unobtrusive, but apparently Basira was right and this only worked to be unnoticeable when you didn’t stand out as a foreign stranger in a close-knit village, because in practice it just made them look like particularly weird bodyguards. Which, Martin supposed, they were.

When they got back to the cottage, they dropped their Dark stones into the little dish shaped like a seashell by the front door and Martin called a meeting.

“Apparently,” he announced, “there’s been some kind of monster spotted outside the town. Some kids were mucking about on the road up here last night and they spotted some tall, faceless being in a suit with impossibly long fingers, shambling slowly toward them.”

“Sent by Jonah, you think?” Tim asked, perking up.

“Unlikely,” Martin said, staring hard at Mary. Everyone else stared, too. Mary blushed.

“They were getting close to the house!” she protested. “We don’t want people out here! They might’ve recognised someone.”

“Ah, yes, because starting a local monster legend is much less conspicuous,” Basira said drily.

“Mary,” said Tim with mock seriousness, “be honest. Were you being Slenderman? Because you’re better than that. You can be so, so much more creative than Slenderman.”

“I like Slenderman,” she mumbled.

Daisy rubbed her temples. “I regret every decision in my life that has lead me to this point.”

“Mary,” Basira said, “is it possible for you to… not… creep the locals out? Is that a thing you can physically do, or is it just part of your nature that we have to work around?”

“I think she should keep doing it,” Tim said. “It’s a great cover.”

Everyone stared at him.

“I mean,” he continued, “they think we’re super weird anyway. We’re noticeable anyway. If they’re going to be speculating on us, would you rather lead them down the path of ‘are those guys cryptids or something’, or ‘hey that one looks like that serial killer I saw on the news’? Yeah, we’re hiding out from someone who knows about spooky powers, but the world is full of stories about kind-of-human monster people. The dangerous identifiers, so far as Jonah’s concerned, are our faces and Martin’s weird eyeball shit. The more run-of-the-mill cryptid nonsense we muddy the waters with, the better.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Daisy said. “This is a terrible idea, and it will end badly.”

“Don’t all our ideas?”

\---------------------

  
  


While everyone else was busy doing stuff, Basira cornered Tim. “Hey. Has Daisy been talking to you?”

“About what?”

“About whatever’s been going on with her lately. You noticed, right? Something’s off, and she won’t talk to me.”

“Doesn’t she tell you everything?”

“I wish.”

“I’m sure she’d fine? She’s probably just bored because there’s nothing to do here.”

“You mean there’s nothing to hunt here.”

“Maybe?”

“It’s not that. We’ve only been here for two days. We’ve gone weeks before without needing to track anyone down and she didn’t get like this. Anyway, it started shortly before we headed out. She’s been off since… I don’t know.”

“She’s been off since the Agnes thing,” Tim said quietly. “I’ve actually been thinking about that. We know there are things out there that can replace people. When you guys were in that fireproof Darkness crate – ”

“No, that’s not possible. I was lying on top of her the whole time.”

“Right. Good.” He chewed his lip. “In that case I have no idea what’s going on with her. But she’s more likely to talk to you than anyone else.”

Basira laughed hollowly. “You know what’s really shitty about this situation? Apart from absolutely everything? I’m not gonna be able to finish my psychotherapy training now, being a serial killer on the run from the law and everything. Even if we pluck Jonah’s eyes out and somehow find a way to free ourselves from the Institute without going blind, that doesn’t do anything for clearing our names. No matter how this goes, we don’t have a way back.”

“… Huh. I hadn’t even thought about that.”

“You hadn’t thought about your future as a wanted criminal?”

“To be honest, I haven’t thought much about the future at all for… well, since finding out I couldn’t quit the Institute, probably. It’s kind of just been one thing after another. I’m incredibly surprised I’m still alive. Come to think of t, maybe that’s Daisy’s problem. Maybe she realised the same thing you did.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

\--------------------------

  
  


Daisy sat under a tree and watched the sun go down. She heard Martin approaching and took the cup of tea he held out for her. “Thanks. Hey, Martin – I need you to do something for me.”

“Hmm?”

She could practically feel that fucking gaze on her. Keeping her eyes on her tea, she said, “I need you to, to see something for me. With…” she waved a hand.

“I can’t control what I Know, Daisy.”

“You can control what you ask, though. Use that.”

“What do you wa – I mean, I need to know what you’re asking me to do.”

This wasn’t something that Daisy wanted to talk about. But she did need help. She needed information, and Martin could get her that. “I can’t… I can’t see things clearly. I haven’t been able to for awhile no, maybe forever, but I never really thought much about it, because nobody can, really. But when we fought Jude? You know that, that box?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember the box.”

“Right. You were in there a lot longer than we were. Did it feel like something was missing?”

“I felt blind,” Martin admitted. “Not just from not having any light, but… completely unmoored and disoriented. Is that was this is about? The box scared you?”

Daisy shook her head. “Nothing in that box was half as scary as the fire we were hiding from. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t hear the Blood properly in there. It was as confused as I was. Indistinct. It was only for a few minutes, but I thought more clearly in those few minutes than I ever remember thinking in my life. And I remember giving my statement to Jon, ages ago. And the statements in the archives. There’s information there that, that should be forgotten, or confused, or buried, and the Eye can pull it right out, clear as day. I can’t trust the memories when I look through them, through the haze of the Blood, but with your help – ”

“You want me to take your statement, so you can be sure you’re seeing everything accurately.”

“Yeah.”

“Daisy, you’re not an Institute employee. The nightmares – ”

“Screw the nightmares! This is more important than some bad dreams! Honestly, they’ll probably be a good reminder. Do you have any idea of the things I’ve done, the people I’ve – ”

“Yes. Some of it.”

Daisy looked at him in surprise. He smiled apologetically.

“Like I said,” he shrugged. “I can’t control what I Know.”

“Right. Then you see why it’s important. I became a police officer because I wanted to make the world better. I can keep burying my head in the sand and feel like I’m making a difference, or I can face the truth and try to actually not… not make things worse than I already have. But I need you to help me see the way forward to do that.”

“Okay. Tell me what to ask, and I’ll ask it.”

Daisy told him.

Martin fixed his piercing gaze on her, and asked. “Daisy. What does the Blood say to you?”


	142. Chapter 142

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy finds clarity. Basira reflects on their peaceful cottage life. Martin makes cottage pie.

Martin wished it wasn’t so satisfying to hear Daisy’s life story. She’d always been a pretty private person, so far as he could tell, and he’d certainly never been close to her. This seemed like the sort of conversation she should be having with Basira. But maybe that was the problem; Basira was too close. Basira was involved.

Or more likely it really was just because he had the magical truth telling powers. It didn’t have to be deep.

She told him about Calvin. She told him about her former partner, in the coffin. She told him about her plans to kill Jon, if nature hadn’t gotten there first. She took him through a dozen or so cases she’d taken, and he could hear the surprise catch her voice several times as she explained people being more harmless or less aggressive than she’d thought, or choices she’d made that had, at the time, felt like the inevitabilities that most choices feel like in the heat of the moment.

It was almost two hours before she stopped talking. The sun was well and truly down. Then, she just said, “Thank you, I think I understand now,” and walked away without comment. He was nervous, for a moment, thinking she might do something… drastic… but she just went inside. Probably off to bed.

Martin decided he’d see her again soon enough, in his dreams.

\--------------------

  
  


Sasha dry swallowed two aspirin and rubbed at her temples. Trying to see anything through that damned Dark protection that the group were using was exceedingly difficult. If her Archivist wasn’t there, she wouldn’t be able to see anything at all; even through his eyes, flashes longer than about thirty seconds were so taxing as to not be worth it. She just wanted to know when he reached the statement.

She knew that it didn’t matter if she saw him read it or not. She’d know that the door was open as soon as it was, well, open – the entire world would. Sasha didn’t know exactly what her new world would look like, but she knew enough that it’d be damn hard to miss the change. She knew he had a copy – she’d slipped one into every box on unread statements in the archives and simply removed the spares after Melanie had grabbed a box for him – so it was just a matter of waiting. There was nothing to monitor.

She kept sneaking glances, anyway. Everything was ready. Everything was prepared. Her Archivist was marked and the ritual was ready to go off without a hitch, and not know the exact timing was killing her.

She just needed patience. She’d waited over two centuries. She could wait a few more days, a few more weeks, a month or two.

Nothing could stop her now.

\-----------------

  
  


“Guys, seriously, stop sending us fake vampire stories. We can tell. My day job is separating bullshit encounters from real encounters and your spooky little ‘telepathic vampire ate my cats’ nonsense isn’t getting past me.”

“You should be used to it, Melanie, what with all the garbage you had to filter through to find real ghost hauntings for Ghost Hunt UK.”

“Yeah, but you got a whole community there. That’s what we need – a True Supernatural Encounter community.”

“There are like ten billion subreddits about that, I think. Most of them are shit.”

“There you go, guys. If you want to send us annoying bullshit, tell us what True Supernatural subreddits and internet forums you think are actually good and which ones are shit. This’ll be a productive discussion.”

\-----------------

  
  


Two weeks passed in the cabin, and Basira was confused. Why weren’t she and Martin sick?

Maybe it was because they were still doing the work; Martin was recording and transcribing the statements, she was annotating them and adding whatever supplemental research existed (they couldn’t do much new follow-up from their cabin), and once a week they’d use the computer in the village library to send the transcripts to Melanie’s private phone that she never took to the Institute. Maybe that was enough, and their physical presence wasn’t required. Or maybe it was the nature of their employment. She was part time; did she get longer before any symptoms would kick in? Martin, the Archivist, had been implied to be ‘strong enough’ to possibly resist things like Jonah dying; could he resist the effects of being away from the Institute, too?

Or, perhaps, Jonah had simply let them go. He had tipped off the police to get rid of her, Daisy and Tim, presumably to stop them from killing him, and he’d never been one to take any conflict with them particularly personally. Perhaps he saw them working from afar as an acceptable arrangement, and put in the necessary leave time, or whatever bureaucratic nonsense he did to loosen the reins whenever they had to go anywhere. Basira considered this the most likely scenario, and while it did have certain advantages – being left alone by Jonah Magnus for the time being was about the best they could hope for – she really didn’t like the idea that they were surviving on his sufferance. If he’d loosed the leash, he could draw it tight again.

In the meantime, things seemed to be going… okay. Tim tended to go a bit stir crazy, but he and Mary had developed some kind of hybrid tag/ hide and seek game to play in the rocky hills that at least kept them out of everyone else’s hair while they acted like toddlers. Martin had started building a vegetable garden and failed quite badly at several attempts of cooking sourdough. Without much call to abuse his powers and with a steady supply of written statements, seemed hungry a lot of the time, but hadn’t needed any further statements from her. Taking Jude’s and Daisy’s within a few days of each other was probably enough for a while, if he was careful. And Daisy…

Daisy seemed directionless. Unfocused. Basira knew why; Daisy had explained why. About how she didn’t know who she was, without the Hunt, and she wanted to change that. Basira had warned her against it; she’d learned enough about how the powers worked to know how dangerous it was for Daisy to turn her back on them like this. Feed the power or it feeds on you. But Daisy hadn’t cared. If something came after them, if they genuinely needed her protection, she’d be there, but until then…

Until then, she made things. Basira had drawn from what she’d learned in college to try to advise her, even though she was way too close to the situation, and advised her to find something creative and constructive to do that build a physical, tangible product.

She’d chosen woodworking, mostly because there was a woodworker in the village willing to sell her his old tools and give her some friendly beginners’ advice. Their cabin now had four beds instead of the starting two, which meant that everyone had somewhere to sleep (Basira and Daisy shared), and Daisy was in the process of replacing the rickety dining chairs, ready to sand and retreat the chipped old table after that. Her work wasn’t pretty, but it was stable, and Basira couldn’t wait to see how much better the fourth chair would be than the first one.

All in all, things weren’t bad. Well, there were problems – they owed Sasha her vengeance, and Daisy was getting weaker, and Melanie wasn’t happy about working in the Institute and might be in danger should Jonah take issue with the archives – but things were about as stable as they could really expect.

They did need a plan, though. Because Daisy was going to get weaker, and Martin was going to get hungrier, and the longer they let Jonah get more entrenched as Sasha James, Head of the Magnus Institute, the harder it was going to be to restrain him and rip his eyeballs out. The longer they sat around playing cottage, the harder it was going to be to act.

Sooner or later, they were going to need to act.

\----------------------

  
  


Martin had always sort of dreamed of a quiet life in a remote cottage somewhere. Admittedly, he’d sort of hoped to settle down with a cute guy who appreciated a good cup of tea, not three serial killers and an eldritch monster, and he’d expected it to be more of a perk of a dream job or early retirement plan than running away from his body-stealing evil boss who’d given him nightmare powers and killed his friend, but these things happened. They happened to him, at least.

Martin carefully placed the cottage pie he’d prepared for lunch in the oven. Agatha, down in the village, had gone white as a sheet when she’d seen how many ready meals he’d bought from her in their first week, and had insisted on making copies of all of her favourite recipes for him, marking which ones were good for beginners and threatening to come down to the cottage and show him how to cook herself if he didn’t do it. Obviously, that wouldn’t do, and given how much free time he had on his hands, he’d just… started cooking for everyone. It was a lot easier than Tim had always made it out to be.

He could hear the distant thud of Basira, chopping wood. Daisy, sharpening something metal – probably one of her woodworking tools. Tim and Mary would be off in the hills, doing whatever they did, but they’d all come in in an hour or so for lunch.

Giving Martin plenty of time for a snack of his own.

He made himself a cup of tea, drizzled in some fresh honey from the little pot on the table (harvested by Daniel down in the village from his own bees) using the little wooden honey dipper that had been Daisy’s first project, and pulled a statement at random from the box at his feet. He turned the tape recorder on and opened his laptop to transcribe as he read.

“Statement of Hazel Rutter, regarding a fire in her childhood home. Original statement given August ninth, nineteen ninety two. Audio recording by Martin K Blackwood, the Archivist. Statement begins.

“Hello, Martin.”

Martin felt a stab of panic. He knew who was speaking to him, speaking through him. But despite the panic, his tone remained steady, smug, as that evil bastard’s words flowed through him.

“Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.

“I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading,” he continued as he tried with all his might to stop reading, “there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.  
“Now, shall we turn the page and try again?”

  
Hands shaking, eyes glued to the paper, Martin turned the page.

  
And kept reading.


	143. Chapter 143

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An explanation.

“I’m sure you’re as eager as I am to get to the main event, Martin, but I hope you’ll indulge me a little while I explain just how we got here. We are servants of Knowledge, after all, and to have Knowledge is to have Power in a very real and literal sense for being such as we. I feel that you’ll make a much better conduit if you properly understand what’s going on – besides, you have a right to properly understand your own heritage. You do know your heritage, don’t you, Martin? As hard as I Looked, I never found any hint that you did. Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter any more. Quite possibly, it never did.

“Let us start with the story of the world; the Tower of Babel. Do you know this story, Martin? I’m sure you’ve heard the bastardised version – humanity tries to build a tower to heaven, and God strikes them down for their hubris and scatters them to the corners of the Earth, confusing their tongues so that they can never coordinate on such a level again. But the truth of the matter is that this gets the steps backwards. The Tower was destined to fall due to a curse carried by the builders themselves, instilled before the first brick was laid. So let us start the story there – before the beginning.”

Despite the situation, Martin was intrigued. What did Jonah mean, his heritage? How did Jonah know this story?

“Before the beginning of the world, there was another. The story doesn’t describe it in detail, and I don’t know all that much about it – I feel, in fact, that it may be impossible to know anything concrete about it, that that Knowledge was erased where our story begins. Suffice to say that there was a world, and in that world was power. Power in fear, certainly. Power in different fears, like in ours… difficult to say. More likely, I think, there was power in fear, and love, and hope, and anger, and probably indigestion, for all I know. There was power, and people who sought to hoard it and control it and share it. There was one particular fear that would not fit into Smirke’s taxonomy, because the culture from which it came is so alien that none of us would be able to properly conceive of its edges. But if he were to name it, I believe he would have called it something like ‘Revelation’.”

Martin got hold of himself. His curiosity didn’t matter. Wanting to hear this didn’t matter. If it was important, Mary could read it and explain it to him later – what mattered now was finding some way, any way, to _stop reading_.

“The fear served here, this central fear, is the fear of terrible knowledge. I know what you’re thinking, Martin – cultural shifts or not, terrible Knowledge is clearly within the purview of the Eye. And I’m sure that in naming it as such, it is my own bias showing – a servant of the Corruption would probably characterise it as a memetic infection, and a child of the Mother of Puppets would talk about curiosity as a compulsion that humans are helpless to resist, walking us to our doom with steps that we believe voluntary all the way. A servant of the Spiral might speak of the madness inherent in trying to behold the truth, a Stranger of the false world we must construct to create meaning and the illusions of individual lives – I am sure that anyone, upon reading the central texts of the Library, would interpret it in favour of their own prejudices. But I truly believe that Revelation is as close to a correct interpretation as we can achieve, and that the Eye is the purest expression of power. How else could I have so easily bound the Library to its will? Such things are destiny, not luck. But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”

Could Martin shout for help? No. Could he make enough noise that someone might investigate? No. Daisy had stopped sharpening her tools; she’d be off with Basira by now. Nobody was in hearing range.

“Once upon a time, there was a cult of the Revelation. And they sought to do as people seek to do, when hearing the whispers of power – they sought to share it with the world. I don’t know exactly what they did, Martin – believe me, I looked everywhere I could for that information, as it would be invaluable in trying to design another successful ritual, although I very much doubt that anything appropriate to their world would be appropriate to ours. But succesed they did. Their success was more partial, more limited, than the true domination that we will achieve together, but it was a beautiful remaking of the world. They bound their God to a physical form, something we need not bother with, because we will be using their God as a lynchpin for our own.”

Could he get up, and take the paper with him, and go looking for help while he read? No; he couldn’t seem to leave the chair.

“They bound their God in a form that today, we would call a library, although back then of course there was no such thing as the written word, and no libraries. A library with three parts – the location, the centre of control, which our ancestors would have called the Circle of power, although the Library’s true location of course encompasses the world. The Singing Stones, the repositories of the fear, dark scars in reality through which the terrible Knowledge of Revelation could pour into the minds of humans who dared to suffer that fatal human weakness of curiosity; knowledge that sang from rocks and was ingested with forbidden fruits and, eventually, began to manifest as books. And, of course, the Seer. The crucial element of human experience. For the power of Revelation, and its children in our world present in our fears, is in the human experience. Knowledge is dead if it is not seen, felt, comprehended, catalogued, so a piece of the Library must be in a human representative to perform this task. A Seer, a Librarian – as we have taken to calling them in these times, an Archivist.”

Destroy the paper; he could destroy the paper. He couldn’t read it if he destroyed it. Did he have a lighter? No. He could pour his tea on – no. No, he couldn’t bring himself to pour the tea on the paper.

“These things are the centre of power for the Revelation, but its true presence is in the mind of every human being. This is where the story of Babel begins – with a people cursed by God to keep building and building and building in vain to reach Him, believing He is above them somewhere and continually redefining ‘above’, not realising that he has been hiding within their own minds the entire time. Driven by the Revelation, humans invented writing and domestication and agriculture and engineering and industry, causing more productivity, more population, more collective pain and fear with every revolution. Driven ever higher until we can no longer see, no longer even comprehend the ground. Can you even conceive of what it would be like to live before the invention of fire, Martin? Don’t try to envision living without fire or any post fire technologies now – that’s not the same. Anything that you can conceive of as the sort of mindset that a person living in such a time would have is simply incorrect. We build higher, and higher, and higher, and we would not recognise our ancestors. We would not recognise our descendants. Humanity builds, seeking further knowledge and further power to find even more knowledge, in the relentless march to an ever-shifting goal. This is the middle of the story.”

There had to be _something_ he could do. Something to stop reading, to put a halt to this before he got through Jonah’s indulgent posturing and to the part where he’d be this ‘conduit’ that Jonah had so ominously hinted at. _Anything_.

“And you already know the end of the story, don’t you, Martin? The end of the story is… us. You and me, and this statement you’re reading, standing atop a tower of progress primed to collapse under its own weight. To save the tower is impossible; our job is to collapse it in such a way that we can profit off the rubble, lest we be crushed by it. So let me explain how we… what’s a good metaphor? … set and primed the charges.

“Why does a man seek to destroy the world?”

Martin ran desperately through his options as he read Jonah’s smug little explanation of his ritual, of what he learned watching Gertrude, of how he worked to prepare Jon and then Martin. All the awful things that had happened over the past several years, the danger, the trauma, the deaths, all laid out neatly as step forward in his horrible apocalypse plan. Martin’s hands trembled with fury, and he stopped typing partway through, but he couldn’t will himself to look away from the paper.

Could he bite his tongue off? No. Could he cover his eyes? One, yes, but not both. He supposed this was his own dumb fault, in a way. He’d known that Jonah was up to something, and he’d agreed to become the Archivist anyway. At every turn, knowing what it would do to him, he’d chosen to see more, to know more, to experience more. At the brink of death, he’d had the choice to leave this world or become a monster within it, and he had chosen the second option. Should he really be surprised that at this point, no options were left to him? He’d given himself over so completely, piece by piece, and now he couldn’t do anything except what he’d been made to do.

Except for _one_ thing.

There was the option to say ‘no’. To walk away completely. He couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t do any half-measures, but… could he still turn his back on the Eye completely? Could he quit his job? Maybe. It… it felt like that option should still be available to him. That felt fair, right. As a tool for the Eye, he could no longer resist it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stop being a tool for the Eye, right? It was worth a shot. If the intent wasn’t to stop reading, but to quit entirely…

What did he have at hand to use? No knives or needles or anything useful. Could he do the job with his thumb? Eyeballs were pretty soft, weren’t they?

“Now, repeat after me.”

The honey dipper! Daisy’s first project, made without the wood turner she needed to do it properly, so the handle was too thing and pointy and splintery. Perfect.

“You who watch and know and understand none.”

Not giving himself time to consider just how much this was going to hurt, Martin snatched up the honey dipper and jammed it into his right eye socket. He wiggled it around, fluid pouring down his cheek. His gasps and broken sobs of pain didn’t seem to impede his reading.

“You who listen and hear and will not comprehend.”

One more. One more. It was his left eye, or the whole world. _You can do it, Martin. Just quit your fucking job_.

“You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.”

He pushed it in. And suddenly, Martin couldn’t see anything.

“Come to us in your wholeness!”

Martin stopped chanting. He had to. He didn’t know the next line.

\----------------------

  
  


The honey dipper went in, and Sasha’s view of the scene was violently and jarringly cut off. She let loose a string of the strongest invectives she’d collected over the past two and a half centuries, and broke two fingers trying to put her fist through a stone wall.

\---------------------

  
  


Martin had known, intellectually, that driving a bit of splintery wood through some of the most delicate external tissue on the human body wasn’t going to feel great, but he still wasn’t quite prepared for the pain. He would’ve thrown up, if there had been anything in his stomach; instead he clutched the edge of the table and tried to breathe through the agony of his ruined eyes, followed very quickly by a wave of dizziness and sudden full-body weakness that slumped him against the tabletop while apparently random points of intense pain lanced through his body, his back, his arms, his face. It took a while for him to pinpoint exactly what was hurting; old injuries, injuries that had healed so completely he never thought about them any more. Injuries healed with the power of the Eye.

The power of the Eye had kept him alive, when Mary had bound him to the book. Was he going to die here?

He sat for awhile, breathing, and death didn’t seem to come for him, although he sure felt like it should. He couldn’t tell if his old wounds had actually reopened – he might be feeling blood on his skin, or just sweat. He got himself together enough to check, running his fingers up his arm… solid skin. That was something, at least.

The last page of Jonah’s statement was still scrunched up in his fist. He tore it in half and tore the bottom half, the half with the incantation, into tiny pieces, dropping them in his tea to destroy them, and felt a sick satisfaction in knowing that it wasn’t difficult to destroy it at all.

Then he sat, and waited, and tried to think about how exactly he was going to explain this to everyone when they came in for lunch.


	144. Chapter 144

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Get wrecked Jimmy Magma.

Sasha hadn’t been a child for centuries. That didn’t change the fact that she really wanted to have a massive screaming tantrum right there in her office.

Instead, she straightened the nameplate on her desk and reminded herself that there were tasks that needed to be done immediately, before she had time to seek medical attention for her fingers. This was a bad situation. This was a very, very bad situation.

She’d been so close. He had been prepared, he had been ready, he had been _literally chanting the incantation_. The world had been hers and then, very suddenly, it wasn’t.

She was going to have to start all over again. She’d poured so many resources, called in so many favours, to prepare Martin, and now she was going to have to begin all over again with somebody new. There were a pack of murderers out there intent on killing her to avenge their friend, and they’d just been upgraded from a temporary problem, until Martin reads the statement, to a much longer-term one. With those Dark stones they were using and Sasha no longer having an Archivist in their midst, she had no eyes on the situation, and with the Archivist having cut his ties with the Institute, she had no leverage to pull them back home. Martin and Basira and Melanie were free agents, now.

Oh yeah, and there was also the not inconsiderable little detail that Martin knew Sasha’s entire apocalypse plan. Which meant that very, very soon, so would the rest of the group. Sasha was willing to concede that perhaps it had been, in some small way, a tiny bit reckless to outline the whole thing _before_ the incantation. Sasha had always been pretty careful about who she shared the plan with; this was a serious information breach.

One she could handle, though. It just meant a bit of reorganising. A bit of planning. Probably some under-the-table deals and making some concessions to her peers that she really didn’t want to make and, if necessary, some rather undignified begging. Peter was going to be so fucking smug about this.

But it was recoverable, if she acted fast enough. Sasha picked up the phone, and made a call.

\------------------------

  
  


As soon as Basira came back into the cabin, it was obvious that something was very wrong. Martin sat at the dining table, back to the door, unnervingly still. Tea and honey were splashed across the table, including the keyboard of his laptop, the honey dipper clutched tight in one hand. The cottage pie in the oven smelled amazing, but that was probably unrelated.

“Martin?” she asked.

“I’m afraid I had to make a rather important decision without consulting the group,” Martin said shakily. “I hope you can forgive me.”

“Martin, what did – ? Fuck!”

Martin had turned to face her, and the evidence of… his, his eyes were… Basira went straight for the first aid kit over the sink.

“Fuck, Martin, we should’ve talked about this, you can’t just go putting your eyes out by yourself,” she said as she started to clean up his face. How did you even apply first aid to destroyed eyes? Trying to, to take the remnants out seemed like a bad idea, but there was a massive infection risk, surely… should she just bandage them up and leave the rest to the professionals? That was the usual thing to do with first aid, but where was the nearest hospital that could handle this kind of thing, and how were they going to get him treated without being asked for ID? “We have talked about this! We – ”

“There wasn’t any time,” Martin explained, tapping a tea-stained statement on the table. “I destroyed the dangerous part. The rest should be safe to read.”

Basira finished taping bandages over his eyes and started to skim the statement. She’d barely started when the door opened behind her. Daisy froze in the doorway. “Martin? What the fuck?”

“I’m only explaining this once,” Martin said, his voice strained. “So you’re going to have to wait until Tim and Mary get here and freak out, too.”

“Or just read this,” Basira said, angling the paper so that Daisy could read over her shoulder. “It seems to explain everything pretty clearly.”

They’d gotten most of the way through the statement when Tim kicked the door open, piggybacking Mary. He dropped her in shock as soon as he spied Martin. “Martin, what the hell did you – ?”

“Read the statement, it’ll explain faster than I can.”

“You don’t look great. Are you okay?”

For somebody for his whole eye area covered in bandages, Martin managed to pull off a pretty good unimpressed look.

“I mean, apart from the eyes?”

“Um, well. No? But there’s not much that can be done about it, so…”

“How did you know this wouldn’t kill you?” Basira asked. She looked at him more closely. “Is it killing you?”

“To answer both questions, I don’t know. But considering the alternative…”

“Yeah. Jesus.”

The four of them read the statement, then read it again to make sure they’d understood everything. Then stood in thoughtful silence for awhile.

“Okay,” Tim said. “So there’s a lot to unpack there.”

“It explains a lot, I think,” Basira said.

“What, like that Jonah’s off his rocker? He thinks we live in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world!”

“Sounds about right to me,” Daisy joked.

“There have been many apocalypses,” Martin said. “The great oxidation event, the K-T extinction – ”

“A rock killing some dinosaurs is a bit different to somebody remaking the entire world with fear magic!” Tim pointed out. “I think we’d have noticed if we lived in a fear apocalypse hellworld!”

“How would you notice?” Mary asked. “Whatever world you are born into is your world. If this ritual had succeeded and brought all the fears through, and in ten thousand years’ time a child is born into whatever societies people have built to cope with their world, and you tried to explain to them that they were born into a post-apocalyptic world, do you think they’d believe you? If you tried to explain your world, the ‘real’ world, do you think they’d have any ability to understand what you meant?”

“It does answer a lot of questions,” Basira said, nodding. “Like the supernatural statement thing. I couldn’t figure out why, if we were just serving the fear of being watched, it mattered whether a statement was supernatural or not. But if Martin’s a fragment of an evil god and his job is specifically to channel the human experience of that god’s influence – ”

“Please never call me a fragment of an evil god again.”

“Fine, whatever; then it makes sense. Also, the fear thing. I’d never been able to figure out why fear, specifically, is powerful. Of all the human emotions, it seemed that a world where only our fear is given form is… well, it’s a bit anthrocentric to say ‘cruel’, but it’s a big thing we were asked to accept without any real explanation. But if this whole world was built on that model, then sure.”

“Still cruel,” Daisy said.

“Yes, but in a way that makes sense.”

“But it isn’t,” Tim insisted. “Love and hope and joy and anger and sadness all exist, why would they be here if the point is fear?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Mary asked. “Do they interfere with the fear at all? Other emotions provide contrast to sharpen fear, and provide complex mental environments to create more refined kinds of fear. They drive people to work to together to make better lives and bigger societies, creating more people and animals to feel fear, and more things to be afraid of.”

“So you’re saying everything good in this world only exists to make us afraid,” Tim said bitterly.

“I’m not saying anything exists to do anything. I’m just saying there’s no reason why someone making a fear-based world would want to get rid of anything else humans experience. Maybe there were things that your predecessors did experience that got in the way, and they were removed with the apocalypse; I don’t know any more than you do. I’m just saying there’s room for love and joy in the world.”

“But if the whole thing is for – ”

“What’s a mulberry leaf for? Is it to smell nice in the summer? Is it to collect energy for the mulberry plant? Is it to give spiders somewhere to hide? Or to give food to a silkworm, to make more wild silkworms? Or to give food to a silkworm to make more silk for a farmer? What something is ‘for’ is different to different people. This world is this world, and it’s ours, and us learning about its origins is… really unsettling, but it doesn’t _change_ anything.”

“I still think he’s just a nutjob,” Tim muttered.

“You may be right,” Basira shrugged. “I’ve heard weirder world origin stories. More importantly, he’s gonna try this again with some new Archivist, and we’re going to have to stop him, meaning Mission: Take Down the Evil Body Hopping Bastard is no longer a revenge and personal safety mission. This is now definitely and unequivocally a ‘save the world’ mission.”

“Fantastic,” Daisy said. “Do we actually have a plan for doing that yet?”

\--------------

  
  


Sasha gritted her teeth and listened to Peter’s irritatingly tinny laugh echo from the phone speaker.

“Sorry, Elias,” he said after a good minute of guffawing, “I just… I want to make absolutely certain I understand the situation here. Can you explain all that again?”

Sasha took a deep breath, prayed for patience, and explained a second time.

More laughter.

“After you went to all the trouble of getting him marked.”

“Yes.”

“Including our wager.”

“Yes.”

“And you told him your plan?”

“He’s a conduit for fearful Knowledge! I thought that him having a clear understanding of the situation would improve – ”

“You just wanted a chance to do a big villain monologue, didn’t you? How much did you gloat? Did you tell him that you weren’t so different, he and you?”

“Peter, you don’t have to explain the missteps in this situation, I’m well aware. Are you going to help me or not?”

Peter laughed into the phone once more, then hung up.

Sasha stared at the phone. She had no idea whether that was a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.


	145. Chapter 145

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to see some side characters again.

Georgie walked into the lounge room, and froze at the sight of the grey-haired man standing uncomfortably in the corner. Could be a burglar, could be someone who was here to steal her fingernails as an offering to a meat god or something. Hard to tell these days.

“Ah, hello,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met. You would be Georgie Barker?”

She may not recognise the man’s face, but she sure as hell knew that voice, from the Panopticon. “You’re Peter Lukas.”

“Indeed! Pleased to meet – ”

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Certainly. I have no business with you, anyway. I was actually looking for Melanie.”

“She doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

“I suppose she wouldn’t.” He turned to the door.

Georgie couldn’t help asking. “What do you want with her? Pull her into another murder bet?”

“Quite the opposite, in fact. I thought she might like to know that Elias has asked me to get rid of her.”

Georgie stepped back and scanned the room for anything that might prove a useful weapon against a man with reality-jumping isolation powers.

“Oh, don’t look so worried. I’m nobody’s attack dog. I wish Melanie all the best. I just thought she should know, since if he’s asked me, he’s bound to ask others. Do pass the message along will you?”

“Wait. Why does he want to kill her?”

He shrugged. “For reasons that aren’t any of my business, to be perfectly honest.”

“You don’t know?”

“The question isn’t whether I know, the question is whether I want to get involved. And I don’t.”

“But you came here to warn her. That’s getting involved.”

“Yes, well, aside from the unpleasant business near the end there, what with her refusing to take the Panopticon, she really was a very good assistant. Handled all my emails, prevented me from having to talk to anyone… I felt I owed her a little heads-up. She deserves a chance, don’t you think?”

“Don’t try to convince me you care about her.”

“Fine. You caught me. She’s a promising disciple of the Lonely, and that is something that I find very valuable. Having a bit of a crisis of faith right now, I understand, but in time – ”

“She’s not going back to that… that nonsense you put her through.”

“Hmm. Perhaps. But Elias has friends far scarier than me out there, and you are going to need some kind of power to protect yourselves. If she’s not willing to use what she has… well, I’m sure you two know best. Best of luck, Georgie.”

Georgie made the mistake of glancing away before responding, and when she looked back, Peter was gone.

Well, fuck.

\-------------------------

  
  


“How can we be sure this isn’t just Jonah and Peter fucking with us?” Melanie asked as they quickly packed the essentials into the van.

“We can’t. But at this stage, I really don’t care. If he’s telling the truth, we’re in danger; if he isn’t, we’re probably not. So it’s safest to act on his information. We have a week or so until you start getting sick, and then we… we figure something out, I guess.”

“You’re going to get fired.”

“Fine. I hate my job. We’ll be travelling supernatural podcasters, living by our wits and the pennies earned hawking shitty garage band merch.”

“Fantastic, that’s exactly the future I always envisioned.” They climbed into the van. Melanie let Gerogie drive; she was pretty sure she was going to suggest ditching their phones soon, and she wanted to check her email and messages before that happened.

One from Basira; probably work stuff. But no attachments? Hmm. She opened it and gave it a skim. Then a rather more thorough read.

Ah.

“So,” she said in as conversational a tone as she could muster, “I think I know why Jonah wants me dead.”

“Why?”

“He probably assumed that the others would tell me what they’ve just told me. It’s… well. The good news is that I’m probably not tied to the Institute any more, so we can keep driving until we hit ocean if you want.”

“And the bad news.”

Melanie took a deep breath and organised her thoughts. “Okay, so here’s the thing…”

\----------------------------

  
  


“So now we’re a blind guy, three wanted serial killers, and an eldritch monster,” Tim said, pacing. He was still amped up from breaking Martin out of the hospital after his eye surgery; they'd wanted to keep him for observation for a couple of days, and the group did not have time for that. “And we know way too much to just be allowed to run around. Do you think he knows where we are? We should’ve been more careful about not standing out.”

“Really, you think?” Daisy said drily.

“He can’t know,” Basira said. “There are weird people living in little villages all over the planet, he’s not going to look here. That’s how safehouses work.”

“He has magical all-seeing powers! And I’m not happy about relying on a handful of weird stones as our only defense against that!”

“If you have something better to defend against the Eye I’d like to – ”

“Panic won’t help,” Daisy cut in. “We need to think carefully about this. Do we have anything that might help?”

“Right.” Tim tried to think. “Julia and Trevor. I’m sure they’ve had to deal with stuff like this before. They probably have some advice on disappearing.”

“And I can move us to another safehouse,” Daisy said, “if you’re worried that this one might be compromised. It might be best to split up. We’d be less noticeable in small groups.”

“How many safehouses do you have?”

“You don’t need to know that. What matters is that you, Basira and I stay out of England, where the police probably won’t be looking for us, and where it’s more complicated for us to be arrested.”

“Can we trust the People’s Church to help, do you think?” Martin asked. “I mean, if they know we’re trying to take down the Institute...”

“They’ve helped us in the past because Melanie robbed the Institute to pay them,” Basira said. “I don’t think they’d do it out of the kindness of their own hearts. They’ve got their own organisation to rebuild.”

“And I don’t trust them,” Mary said, gripping Martin’s arm. “They already kidnapped you from right under my nose once.”

“You’re going to take that personally forever, aren’t you?” Tim asked.

“He nearly died!”

“If it helps,” Martin said, “I also take it pretty personally.”

“Martin, if you take it personally every time someone kidnaps you, we’re going to run out of potential allies pretty fast,” Tim joked. “Although I suppose that won’t be a problem since you’re no the Archivist any more.”

“Which raises a good point,” Martin said. “Our safety is all well and good, but we’re dancing around the issue that Jonah’s going to get another Archivist, which puts us on a time limit for taking him down.”

“We have years,” Basira said. “It took years with you, anyway.”

“And taking him down might take years. We don’t know how long it’ll take, because we don’t have a plan.”

Tim had a plan. It came down to five minutes alone with Jonah, and a melon baller. The problem was arranging that five minutes alone.

“Maybe we should just go for it,” he suggested.

“What?”

“Go back to London, get in the tunnels, and full-on invade the Institute. What’s Jonah gonna do, traumatise us with his brain magic? Who cares? We’ll probably all die in the attack anyway. The important think is taking him down.”

“We’d have to mow through innocent security,” Daisy pointed out.

“Like we’re not going to have to do that with any plan? You know what would be more dangerous to innocent security guards? The apocalypse.”

“If only our faces werne’t all over the news,” Basira muttered, “assassination would be a lot easier.”

“Can you help with that, Mary?” Martin asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know anyone – you know, any other Stranger manifestations, who can… I don’t know, make us unrecogniseable? That’s sort of your thing, isn’t it? I’m sure the Lonely or Flesh could do it neater or more directly, but…”

“Hmm. Maybe. I’ll try to think of someone? But that’s really something a human is more likely to be able to do. I’ll have a think, anyway.”

“We could just try to find a flesh guy to change our faces,” Basira shrugged. “Maybe that Hopworth guy is around? Incidentally, I hate that our lives have lead to this. Our _faces_ , really.”

“We could just get really good with makeup?” Daisy suggested.

“I also vote for makeup over letting any meat people touch my face,” Tim put in. “I’m way too pretty for plastic surgery, let alone evil magic plastic surgery.”

“You look especially nice today, Tim,” Martin said drily.

Tim rolled his eyes.

“I’ll go down the the village and see if I can get Julia on the phone,” he said. “This is going to be a fun explanation.”

“I’ll come with you,” Daisy said. “To arrange transport out of here.”

“We don’t even know if this spot is compromised,” Martin said.

“You wanna take the chance?”

“Ah. No.”

\------------------------------

  
  


Colleen made a double shot caramel iced mocha on autopilot, hands reflexively performing the job they’d been doing for years on muscle memory alone, and handed it to the customer with a well-practiced smile. In the past, she’d called her effortless efficiency ‘professionalism’, and been quite proud of it. Since finding herself walking to that spider car, she’d been weirded out by it.

But a job was a job. And anywhere she ended up would, she supposed, eventually become a rut.

A new customer walked in, bringing with him a palpable stench of rot. His pale skin hung loose, and much of his hair had fallen out; he looked at her with yellowed eyes, and when he tried a smile, she noticed that several of his teeth were missing, the rest rotten. He walked slowly up to the counter.

“One coffee, please,” he said through an unnervingly wet throat, and tried to hand her a large coin that was probably copper under the green corrosion. She noticed that two of his fingernails were lifted almost clean of their nail beds, a thin pus pooling around them instead of blood.

Colleen chucked her nametag on the counter and walked the fuck out.


	146. Chapter 146

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both sides meet with allies.

Sasha hated getting her hands dirty. She’d had to kill Gertrude herself, had put her own existence on the line to mark Martin with the Lonely, and now here she was, meeting individuals like this in coffee shops, in person, to make back-alley deals with merchandise stolen from Artefact Storage.

Was she losing her touch? She must be. If things were going well, she wouldn’t have to do this kind of nonsense herself.

She didn’t enter the coffee shop until she was sure that Hammond was inside. No point in wasting her own valuable time sitting around waiting for the likes of him. The shop was remarkebly empty, even of a barista, when she walked in, but Hammond just had that effect on people. He sat alone at a table, hands clutched around what looked like a black coffee that, judging from the mess of the place, he seemed to have made himself. Sasha hoped the coffee shop sterilised their machines thoroughly, or there were going to be a lot of cases of food poisoning within the next couple of weeks.

She sat across from him. “Hammond.”

“Watcher.” He grinned. “It’s been a long time.”

 _Because I tend to keep better company, you miserable little man_. “I need these people dealt with.” She pushed the photos across the table. “The ones who come back, anyway.”

Hammond separated the photos out on the table, leaving oily fingerprints on them. “Have to be dead?”

“They have information I don’t want spread, and they pose a physical danger to me and my plans. I want those threats removed. What you actually do to them is up to you. That one on the end there is a manifestation of the Stranger, but if you deal with the others I’m sure she’ll simply lose interest in the matter.”

“Hmn. Not a hit man. Why not send a hit man?”

“I will, but I thought you might be a bit more experienced with the territory. I’ve left you alone in my tunnels for so long… surely you know your way about?”

“That a threat?”

“Does it need to be?”

“Hmn. You have the thing?”

Sasha produced a velvet ring box and slid it across the table. Hammond gripped it with those disgusting fingers, ruining the velvet, and levered it open with his fingernails, pulling one free of the hand. Sasha didn’t bother not to look disgusted. Hammond lifted out the small glass teardrop charm inside and held it up to the light. Inside the glass teardrop was a small amount of black, oily fluid. Hammond inspected it carefully, then stuck it in his mouth and chewed it up. He swallowed. “Goodbye, Watcher.”

Sasha sighed. How had she been so quickly reduced to this?

\-------------------------

  
  


“Apologies for any distracting background noise in this episode, listeners, but for very good reasons we’re recording this episode from a moving vehicle instead of our normal soundproofed studio, isn’t that right, Georgie?”

“It sure is, Melanie. Your humble hosts are currently on the run as we’re being pursued by an evil seer. No, we will not be releasing details, because we don’t want to give you fuckers any horrible ideas by explaining what this bastard tried to do. Also adding a bunch of listeners to the evil seer’s hit list is a great way for our ratings to bomb and then nobody’s ever going to pay us money to sell you guys meal kits and mattresses.”

“We’d be relying on your cousin’s shitty garage band for funding forever, and I don’t think I could live with that. But it does mean that the audio and editing quality of the show might drop for a bit, and for that, we apologise. We’ll try to keep to the upload schedule, but no promises.”

“If the inconsistency bothers you, don’t blame us. Blame the evil seer. Do we have a real-life spooky tale for our listeners today?”

“Sure do! You want one about that bone stealing guy, or a diary that fills in itself with every horrible thought or deed its owner does?”

“Give us the Hopworth one. I’ve had enough Ceaseless Watcher bullshit for today.”

“Okay! So Mara Hale tells us that three years ago, she’d just moved to London…”

\--------------------

  
  


“How are you always involved in the most dramatic kind of bullshit?” Julia asked as she threw her arms around Tim. “My dad was lower profile than you!”

“Hey, it’s not my fault my old boss tried to end the world and stole my friend’s body. Are you going to help me pluck his eyes out, or are you going to complain about my drama?”

“Both, obviously.”

“She makes a good point,” Trevor pointed out. “Leaving a trail for the cops to chase ya. Pretty clumsy.”

“Well, next time I engage in a war against cultists, I’ll be more careful.”

“We were takin’ down the cult too and they never chased us. Just sayin’. And you brought one o’ yer friends, I see.”

Basira gave him an acknowledging nod and resumed skimming the streets. “Can we have this conversation on the move?”

“I’m sure we’re safe,” Tim said. “I covered up all my dashing scars and your face is an entirely different shape, we’re practically unrecogniseable. Are you sure this makeup doesn’t contain Stranger magic?”

“It’s called contouring, and it really isn’t hard, with practice,” Basira said patiently.

“Thought you’d already know that kind of thing, prettyboy,” Julia grinned.

“Hey, I’m _naturally_ perfect looking.”

“So the tunnels are probably safe if we stick a bit deeper than we’re used to being,” Basira said, “no matter how many reports the police got about us chasing the apartment dwellers out of them. If the force is anything like it was when I was there, a few weeks is plenty of time for them to get some people lost down there for awhile, get them freaked out by weird shit, and have to print up a whole new round of Section 31 forms and decide not to explore much further. Also, I don’t care what Martin says about the ecosystem, the number of spiders that live in those tunnels is fucking creepy. But they might be keeping an eye on any tunnel entrances they’ve mapped, so we have to be super careful about coming above ground.”

“We shouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter, right?” Julia asked. “If these tunnels lead into the Institute, we just need to wait until we know Sasha’s in her office, storm the Institute in a surprise attack, and grab her eyeballs.”

“Jonah,” Tim muttered. “That’s _not_ Sasha. Sasha’s… Sasha’s almost definitely dead.”

“Whatever. If we need a clean escape, we can just take her hostage and do the eyeballs in the tunnels. It’s not a plan that’s going to take a lot of preparation, is my point.”

“I’d rather go in with full firepower,” Basira said. “We might only get one shot at this. So we should take the time to prepare before we go in with guns blazing. You all know how to use guns, right? Tim?”

“Yes, I remember the gun lessons.”

“Don’t need to sound so sulky about it.”

“I just prefer the feel of an axe is all. Or a melon baller, if we get the chance.”

“I’ll try very hard to give you that chance.”

\------------------

  
  


Sunshine warming the room and the scent of fresh herbs in the air, Martin made tea.

He tried not to feel too guilty about how he and Daisy were sitting this fight out. When he’d tried to apologise to the others before they’d left, Basira had called him an idiot and pointed out that averting an apocalypse had been contribution enough and he deserved a couple of weeks’ rest, at least. Then she’d gotten all quiet and weird about it, as people tended to when they weren’t sure whether it was polite to mention his blindness, which was a reaction that struck Martin as kind of unfair. He had to learn to be blind, and at the same time he had to put up with other people being weird about it, with Basira’s awkward pauses and Mary’s open confusion and Tim treating him like he was made of fucking glass. Yeah, it sucked, but Basira being coy about it didn’t help anything. Yeah, the learning curve had been pretty steep – he hadn’t realised just how many little things he relied on sight for until he’d lost it – but that didn’t mean he needed Tim trying to do every little thing for him or ‘subtlely’ trying to guide him around the house like he was trying to herd a confused bird outside. It just seemed to Martin that if other people were going to be weird about it, that should be their problem, not his.

Daisy wasn’t weird about it, and for that, he was thankful. Daisy could hear him making a simple cup of fucking tea without leaping to her feet to ‘help’ and accidentally mixing up the order of the tea canisters and just generally making everything more difficult. She just quietly thanked him when he placed a cup of tea in front of her, and turned a page in her book.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

There was the kind of slight pause that Martin had come to recognise as somebody trying to show him something, before remembering. “The Lord of the Rings,” she said. “Mary recommended it.”

“You like it?”

“It’s awful.”

“Well. Usually such a statement would be a declaration of war, but from your addiction to The Archers, I already know you have absolutely no taste.”

That got a quiet chuckle.

Martin sat down and sipped his own tea. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

“About the same. Weaker. H… hungry, I guess?”

“I remember the feeling.”

“The call of the Blood is… it’s easier to hear past, but it’s not any weaker? Does that make sense?”

“Sort of. Maybe the rest of you is stronger.”

“Heh. We can hope.” She didn’t sound like she believed it. “How about you? To be honest, I expected that without the Eye, you’d be dead by now.”

“Me, too. I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty normal, actually. I mean, I feel like shit, but in a normal human way. I didn’t realise how much my head used to hurt all the time with the hunger, until it was gone.”

“Reckon if I rip my teeth out, I’d lose the hunger, too?”

“I think anyone with the strength to rip their own teeth out is probably strong enough to deal with it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I hope you’re right.”

“I guess this is us, now, huh? Two ex-monsters sipping tea, waiting to see if we die while our friends save the world.”

“Not where I pictured my life going to be honest.”

“Where did you picture your life going?”

Daisy took her time answering. “Near the end there, I… I was sort of getting worried that I’d be the thing that my friends had to save the world from. This is better, I think. Considering.”


	147. Chapter 147

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of you were disappointed about no Simon Fairchild about ten billion chapters ago, so here you go.

“Home sweet home!” Tim sighed as they strode through the tunnels. He stretched his arms out and grinned.

“Why did I choose you?” Julia asked. “My judgement is usually way better than this.”

“Now that we’re down here, we should fill you two in,” Basira said. “Those Dark stones we’re using for protection up there, we’re not completely certain they work. Anything we said up there should be assumed to be compromised.”

“We don’t know whether or not Jonah heard that little conversation,” Tim added, “but it’s a fake plan. Obviously, we’re not going to storm the Institute directly. We’re trying to win here.”

“So what is the plan?” Trevor asked.

“I am,” said an unsettling voice from the shadows. Someone… something… stepped forward, watched the group with hungry, sunken eyes, and grinned.

“Mary, we’ve talked about this,” Tim said. “Do you have to creep the fuck out of all of my friends?”

“Yes. Literally, yes. I have to do that.”

“So we’re sending a spooky monster to take out a spookier monster?” Trevor asked. “Great. Fantastic. This will go really well, I’m sure.”

“Jonah stole my friend’s body,” Mary said. “He will pay.”

“Isn’t that the kind of thing your kind does all the time?” Julia asked.

Mary opened her mouth. Closed it again. Thought for a moment. “ _I’ve_ never stolen anyone’s body,” was the best answer she could come up with. “Not to wear, anyway.”

“Oh. Fantastic. I feel so much fucking better.”

\-----------------------

  
  


“Hitchhiker,” Georgie pointed out from the passenger seat of the van, her fingers buried in the Admiral’s fur. “Try not to hit him.”

“He’s not going to run out onto the fucking road. At least, I hope not.”

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve seen a hitchhiker do to try to make someone stop.”

But the shrivelled old man on the side of the road didn’t run out in front of the van. He just grinned widely, thumb out, as they breezed past.

Then the whole van seemed to lurch violently it a direction that didn’t exist and Melanie reflexively slammed the brake.

“So kind of you!” the old man beamed, climbing into the back. The Admiral hissed at him.

Melanie and Georgie exchanged a glance and both quietly made sure they had knives within easy reach.

“You’ll want to get driving,” the man advised. “It’s not safe to stay put on these roads for too long.”

Melanie considered her options and, reluctantly, turned the engine back on.

Georgie spoke. “So where to, Mr…?”

“Simon, please. Simon Fairchild. And I’m just headed a little down way down the road. Where are you lovely ladies headed to?”

“Just a little way down the road,” Georgie replied blandly.

“How wonderfully lucky for me, then, hmm?”

Melanie kept driving, with Simon Fairchild grinning creepily at her in the rear vision mirror. He had to know they recognised the name. He had to know that they knew he knew that. Was he just going to sit there and wait and see if they said anything? Was there any way to end this little meeting without them being chucked from something high?

“So do you live in the area, Simon?” Melanie asked, keeping up the polite charade.

“Oh, no; I never live anywhere for long. I’m only here because I lost a bet awhile ago and owe a particularly wealthy and influential friend a favour. But you two will help me fulfil that favour quite nicely, I’m sure.”

Melanie stared at the dirt road ahead. Fuck.

Wait, was something on the road? The ground was…

The ground under them shook, tires losing traction and quickly beginning to sink into the ground. Around them earth rose up. Simon giggled, shouted “Here we go!” and licked his cane in a kind of lifting gesture, and suddenly the ground… wasn’t. The van soared… flew? Fell? For… for time, and then landed with a hard thump that slammed Melanie’s teeth together. “Oh dear! You’ll want to get your transmission checked!” Simon giggled. “Well, that should satisfy Peter, I’m sure. You might want to keep driving, by the way. I think they’re catching up.”

Behind them, the dirt road quickly vanished into a thick column of dust that was definitely getting closer. Melanie floored it. Simon leaned forward, between the front seats, and grinned at them. “Now that that’s out of the way, if would either of you ladies care to join me on a longer flight?”

“If you’re trying to scare me, Mr Fairchild, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Georgie said neutrally. “And if you’re helping Peter, I don’t think dropping Melanie from anything is going to make him happy, is it?”

Simon gave her a long look, and pouted. “You really are no fun, are you?”

“Simon,” Melanie said, trying to keep her van under control at rather highers speeds than she should be taking on a dirt road while something in the flood made an unsettling new rattling sound, “are you going to help us out any further?”

“Hmm… no. No, I don’t think so.”

“Then kindly get the fuck out of my van.”

“As the lady demands.” He gave as theatrical a bow as possible in the confines of the van, opened the side door, and simply leapt out.

Leaving the fucking door open, of course. Georgie clutched the Admiral tightly while air roared through the interior of the van and sucked loose, light objects out onto the road. Fortunately, Melanie had taken this van through enough ghost hunting expeditions that she knew to secure her equipment well, and nothing particularly valuable was lost to the void, but still.

“Who’s even attacking us?” Georgie asked.

“Who the fuck knows? Who knows how any weird magic friends Jonah has? Why’s he after us, anyway? Hasn’t he got Daisy and Tim to worry about?”

“Maybe he’s worried we’re going to reveal his Big Evil Plan on the podcast.”

“I hope so. Then he might focus on other things after we release the next episode that explains that we’re not doing that. How fucking stupid does he think we are? ‘Hey, random collection of people across the world who like spooky shit, want to hear about an apocalypse ritual that totally works? Here’s what this guy tried to do! Don’t try it at home!’ Shit, hold on…”Melanie took the upcoming corner as fast as she dared, which, as it turned out, was rather faster than she should have dared. But, tire damage aside, they stayed on the road and the van stayed upright, so whatever. However the person who tried to bury them was travelling, it wasn’t as fast as a van in the hands of someone with zero regard for speed limits, and the plume of dust receded into the distance. Only when they couldn’t see it any more did Melanie start to relax.

“So that’s two weird old men saving our lives,” Georgie noted. “Let’s try not to rely on that any more. We’re going to pretty quickly run out of weird old men.”

“I sincerely hope we already have,” Melanie replied, reaching over to give the Admiral a scratch. He purred.

\-------------------------

  
  


The sun warmed the kitchen, and Martin made tea. He was spooning sugar into Daisy’s cup when he fumbled and dropped the teaspoon.

It wasn’t everyday clumsiness; it was a familiar sort of fumble, although one he hadn’t made in years. One he had, in the back of his mind, been sort of expecting. After all, the Eye had kept him alive for so long, and now the Eye was gone. So what was keeping him alive? He took his left fingers gently in his right, and tried to flex them. The last two on his hand didn’t move.

“Daisy? Can I borrow your eyes?”

“What’s up?” Daisy asked, coming into the kitchen, new heavy boots thumping on the floor. Her years Hunting had left her with an almost silent casual step, but she was learning to make a bit more noise, for Martin.

He held out his hand. “Can you tell me if there’s anything under these two fingernails here? It’ll be really hard to see, you’ll need a strong light.”

“Let’s have a look.” He heard her phone light click on. She took his hand and turned it this way and that. “Hmm. Yeah, you’ve got some kind of hazy white stuff under there? Patterned like cracks, or…”

“Or cobwebs,” he said quietly.

“This is something we gotta worry about, isn’t it?”

“No. I mean, it… it’s nothing we can do much about.” That wasn’t entirely true; it was something that they could do quite a lot about. It was just something that they weren’t going to do anything about.

Martin hadn’t brought it up with anyone, but he was still very dangerous. Nobody seemed to realise that. He’d been seconds from ending the world, and nobody seemed to notice that that danger hadn’t passed. Oh, sure; he wasn’t the Archivist any more. Jonah couldn’t force him to read anything. And removing his connection from the Eye might have made him… metaphysically unmarked?… by the Eye; he… he wasn’t sure how that really worked. But he had been marked by at least thirteen other powers, and he wasn’t certain whether he specifically needed to be the Archivist to complete the ritual. In the face of that uncertainty, it was best to assume that he was still a risk. Jonah had bragged that he’d been pretty sure the Spider had given him her support for his ritual, making sure that Martin was suitably prepared – now his ritual had failed, and Martin, still marked by at least thirteen fears, was alive and claimed by the Spider. He wasn’t any more keen on starting a Web apocalypse than a Beholding one.

He flexed the part of his hand that still moved easily. The bargain was clear; it was the same bargain every avatar of every fear made. _Use me, or I’ll use you. Feed me, or I’ll feed on you_.

Martin wasn’t the bravest person in the world, but if the choice was ‘be eaten alive by metaphorical conspiracy spiders’ or ‘sacrifice the world’… well, that was an easy choice for anyone to make.

_Why does a man seek to destroy the world, Jonah? You fucking tell me. I’m not going to._

Martin got back to work making tea with his right hand.

\----------------------------

  
  


There was some kind of disturbance in Reception, and Sasha didn’t have time for this.

Really, it wasn’t her problem. Security could handle it. But she happened to be walking through, and the woman arguing with Rosie was very vaguely familiar… she’d come down to give a statement at some point, maybe? Sasha strode over.

“Is there a problem here?” she asked politely.

“Ah, Miss James,” Rosie said, “it’s completely fine, really. I was just explaining to this young lady that the Archivist is currently on leave and she cannot – ”

“Are you in charge here?” the woman asked.

“Yes! Sasha James, head of the Magnus Institute. You have business with the Archivist?”

“Not really, I just think you guys should call him on whatever holiday he’s on and make sure he’s okay.”

“You think there’s a problem?”

“Yes, there’s a problem! Just… just call him, alright?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to need a better reason than that, Miss…?”

“Colleen McKenzie. I can’t… you’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you why, but you really should – ”

“Believe me, Miss McKenzie; whatever your tale, we’ve heard stranger.”

“If you must know, it’s… a dream thing.”

“You had a dream that someone was in trouble?”

“I haven’t, that’s the point. He’s not always in the dreams, conflicting sleep schedules or whatever, but a couple of weeks ago the nightmares just stopped and – okay, look, I know that sounds ridiculous, but the dreams are real, okay. Ugh, I do sound like a crazy person. Just… just give him a call, alright? Give him a call, and I’ll leave, and you can laugh about the crazy lady in the break room later or whatever.”

She was a statement-giver, then. The scary monster man had stopped cursing her with nightmares and her response was… to show up at his place of work and check if he was okay? Hmm.

Sasha scrutinised the woman more deeply and carefully, for as long as she dared, until she started to fidget.

“Why don’t you come up to my office, Miss McKenzie? I can explain the situation to your satisfaction, I’m sure. Also, and I apologise if this is an intrusive question, but you wouldn’t happen to be looking for work right now, would you?”


	148. Chapter 148

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our beloved Institute head keeps being evil.

“There. The episode’s up. Now maybe Jonah will back the fuck off and focus on the actual threats to his life.” Melanie took one last look at the internet cafe before climbing back into the van.

“You kind of want to be one of those threats to his life, don’t you?” Georgie asked.

“Of course I do! Don’t you? I should’ve killed him when I had the chance.”

“What, and trapped yourself in his horrible all-knowing tower?”

“Nope. Just stabbed him and refuse to get into the Panopticon. What would Peter have done about it? Tossed me into the lonely? Which is what he did anyway?”

“The others would have died.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it seems like they’re dying anyway. Sasha’s gone, and if he’s throwing earth-controlling Buried avatars at us, what’s he throwing at them?”

Georgie sighed. “You want to go back, don’t you.”

“I’m not going to put you in that kind of danger.”

“Well you’re sure as hell not going back without me. Come on, let’s go murder a creepy old dude before your creepy old dude loses interest in protecting you.”

“You could not possibly have phrased that in a creepier way, Georgie.”

“Oh, believe me. I could have.”

\-----------------

  
  


Julia was not, on the whole, a fan of the tunnels.

They were dark, for one thing. Not Dark, but normal darkness was somehow worse. She’s taught herself to fight the Dark, it was a real and tangible threat; darkness was… just there, a piece of the world, with far too many bad memories in it. And no matter how many heavy duty batteries they stole to light the tunnels, the fierce light was just keeping the darkness at bay. The instant the lights were switched off, the darkness swooped in again. Without the sun, the natural state of a space was hostile.

The other thing that she didn’t like about the tunnels was the smell. There was something in the air, something… not like the stagnant, earthy air that she would have expected. Not rot, either; she knew what that smelled like. There was a sense of decay to it, but…

When she asked Tim, he said the scent was new. Maybe something had died down there, or the ever-changing tunnels had opened onto a pocket of gas. Either way, it didn’t seem like the healthiest environment to keep living in. So whatever that thing that called itself Mary was doing, Julia hoped it hurried up.

\------------------

  
  


Rosie liked Sasha. She always had. But when it came to choosing a head of the Institute, well, she just seemed like an unusual choice. Oh, she’d always been diligent, intelligent, hardworking, but… Rosie wasn’t entirely sure that so much pressure all at once was particularly good for her? Elias had had his faults, not least of which he’d murdered someone and broken out of prison and was on the run, but he’d always been very inward-focused, so far as the Institute was concerned. People generally knew where they stood and could be certain that whatever happened, Elias would hear about it, and it would be dealt with. Sasha, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be taking the pressure all that well. Rosie had started wearing her oversized kitten-patterned sweaters and Sasha had said nothing, which… actually, that was a nice change. Elias’ obsession with dress codes, had always been a bit much. But so far as Rosie could tell, Sasha hadn’t bothered to look over a single internal report, simply approving them and sending them off without the several notes of meticulous mug suggestions that Elias would always… actually, no. Sasha _was_ better.

Rosie was just worried about her. She holed herself up in her office constantly, had tripled the security resent in the Institute and seemed to spend most of her time worried about people outside of it. Rosie could understand that – he’d come from the archives, after all, and two of those murderers, Tim and Basira, had been her coworkers at some point. Had they been friends? And that woman who’d come in, worried about the Archivist… come to think of it, he hadn’t come back from leave, either. Had something happened to him? Had those murderers gotten to him?

Rosie eyed the new security guards, considering them in a new light. If that was what Sasha was worried about… well. Perhaps some increased security wasn’t such a bad idea.

She’d have to keep an eye out for anything unusual.

\-------------------

  
  


Mary adjusted her security jacket and met Rosie’s eye. She wondered for a moment whether the woman recognised her, somehow… but her eyes simply slid over her to the next person. Mary looked, after all, exactly how one would expect a security guard to look.

Of course, the other security guards probably weren’t hiding a handgun inside their torso, ready to shoot the Head of the Institute in the head the moment they got a clear shot without anyone in the way to interfere.

The plan didn’t have to be _complicated_.

\--------------------

  
  


Sasha sat in her office and watched her new Archivist.

She didn’t usually hire such people from outside the Institute. It just made more sense to promote someone from another department, who she’d had enough time to watch and assess the suitability of, who she could trust to be easy to manipulate and stable enough to survive long enough to make the appointment worth it. The Library had no care for the longevity of its Archivists, which was why Sasha making the appointment and keeping them safely away from interacting with the library proper was so important. Letting it drive somebody mad every decade or so was simply a waste of everyone’s energy, and her archives had enough of a strange reputation without also having to deal with that sort of nonsense.

But this was an exceptional circumstance.

Sasha’s priority wasn’t stability, right now. Sasha’s priority was keeping things ticking while she dealt with the immediate threat posed by the previous archive crew and their friends. Colleen didn’t need to be stable or competent long-term, she needed to be someone who had the necessary personality and type of curiosity, who understood enough of the situation to survive for a while, and who hadn’t had enough regular, ongoing contact with Martin to be an ally or to disbelieve anything that Sasha told her about him. And she ticked all of those boxes. If she survived the immediate crisis, perhaps she’d get a few more marks out of it. If not, well. It’s not like Sasha had invested anything, hiring her. Random civilians with brushes with the supernatural were a dime a dozen, and Sasha could find a properly suitable Archivist to try the ritual again once the previous crew were out of the picture and she had the luxury of time.

Melanie and Georgie seemed keen to keep out of the whole thing, if their podcast was anything to go by, although the fact that she’d had to listen to that populist drivel to try to get clues on their location made her want to kill them on principle. Maybe later, when she had the luxury of resources to waste.

She had no idea where Martin, Mary and Daisy were – presumably Daisy and Mary were acting as bodyguards for Martin off in hiding somewhere – but Tim and Basira had been seen in the company of Trevor and Julia about town for very short stretches of time, disguised enough that a stranger wouldn’t recognise them, buying things like petrol and axes. Sasha couldn’t See them through their own eyes while they carried those Dark talismans, but they were foolish enough to use only a few tunnel entrances, and it was simple enough to keep watch with strangers, knowing that she could tip off the police if anything got really out of hand. Presumably, they were planning an attack from below. That might earn Colleen a decent Hunt mark if the two assistants she’d provided her, chosen more for their confrontational machismo than brains, weren’t able to hold them off while Colleen escaped. Sasha felt it unlikely that they’d attack any of the archive or artefact storage staff, though; they’d come right up looking for her. And she had put more than enough barriers in their way.

She picked up a thin leather bound volume from her desk and turned it over and over in her hands. So far as she knew, the last eyes to read the words in this particular book had been Albrecht Von Closen’s. She herself had enough mastery of the Library to know what it contained, and enough sense to never open it. She didn’t even like having it outside the Library like this – it was one of the central texts, one of the pieces of power that gave her enough influence to choose Archivists. It was for the eyes of an Archivist only.

And it was almost certainly the book that had sent Albrecht on his rather swift downward spiral. With great knowledge comes great power and great madness. Sasha had never allowed any of her Archivists to know of its existence, because she wanted her Archivists to survive for useful lengths of time. It was so much safer to let them develop slowly through little bits and piece of power in the statements, so that their bodies and minds could adapt to handle it.

But these were desperate times, and Sasha needed a powerful Archivist more than she needed a long-lived one. She called the archives.

“Colleen, could you come up to my office? I’ve found something in artefact storage that I think might interest you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This short silly crack fic is now the longest tma fic on ao3, so that's... fun.
> 
> On an unrelated note we should be wrapping up pretty soon (although I thought this would be about 20 chapters long so don't listen to me), but if anyone is interested in reading more of my nonsense, I just finished book 1 of my web serial novel, Curse Words, which you can find here: https://havenstory975986403.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/one-the-cursed-heart/ . Curse Words is the story of a trans boy with a curse in his heart who gets a scholarship to a prestigious magical school to learn to control it. While there, he finds himself embroiled in a dangerous web of modern capitalism, ancient conspiracy, and his own terrible, terrible decisions. Book 2 is updating at one chapter per week, so if you like magical teenagers making bad decisions, you can get it every week!


	149. Chapter 149

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forbidden knowledge and tunnel fights!

Daisy put her book down and listened to Martin typing for awhile. He was probably writing more poetry. He seemed to do that a lot. Slowly, since his left hand had become paralysed, but a guy’s gotta have a hobby, she supposed.

She herself was running out of things to make for their little flat. Without the space of the cottage, there wasn’t really room for a full workshop, so the biggest project she’d made for their temporary home was a couple of new dining chairs. She couldn’t seem to summon the enthusiasm to make a full set. There were two of them, and they weren’t going to have any guests around. Why would they need more than two dining chairs?

She couldn’t focus on the dumb hobbit book. She couldn’t focus on working wood. She couldn’t focus on anything, because Basira was out there in danger, and she had no idea if she was okay. They had zero contact, for obvious reasons. They’d be contacted when things were over. Until then, her job was to keep Martin safe from whatever horrors Jonah might send their way.

She shouldn’t be here, though. She should be there, with Basira. Sometimes, she wondered whether she’d been assigned this job because they thought Martin actually needed protection and she could handle it, or whether it was the opposite – that Daisy was dead weight. She was so weak, know. Ageing, wounded prey stumbling around until someone better and fitter put her out of her misery. Here she was, fading away with wood and old books; there he was, typing what poetry he could before the Spider paralysed him completely. Maybe it would be better if they were found. Same result, but make it quick. At least give their attackers the pleasure of the kill, rather than just letting their lives go to waste.

And she could fight back. God, the luxury, the thrill of fighting back. Of a gun in her hands, a hunt in her mind, blood on her teeth. She could still do it, if she wanted. It would take time to build her strength back up, but she could still do it.

Daisy sighed, and went back to her book.

\--------------------------

  
  


Colleen’s head hurt.

The little book she’d been reading had seemed simple, at first, but the text was… dense. As if she was reading a scientific paper from a field she knew nothing about, but wasn’t allowed to look up any of the abbreviations or measurements, and had to guess their meanings from context. Except that she understood all of the individual words… at least, she was pretty sure she did. She remembered understanding the words, it was just what they were saying together that was complicated. But she couldn’t remember what any of those words had actually been.

Why wasn’t she reading now?

Oh. Her eyes were closed. Her head was on Miss James’ desk. She sat up and opened her eyes and the world looked…

The book wasn’t on the desk, which had been carved from maple wood in nineteen thirty seven. It wasn’t in the hands of Sasha James, which were offering her a glass of filtered water at nineteen point three four degrees celsius. It wasn’t on the carpet, which had been replaced just over three years ago.

“Where’s the book?” she asked.

“Drink this,” Miss James suggested, handing her the water. Colleen met her eyes and pain lanced through her head like the whole universe was trying to force itself into her mind at once. She cried out, and dropped the glass.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You passed out. I was just about to call an ambulance. Are you – ?”

“No; what happened to the book?”

“I put it away. You need to rest; you just passed out.”

“I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping well, and I didn’t have breakfast. I can still _read_.”

“Colleen, look at yourself!”

Colleen did, and almost threw up from… well, this was probably what a microphone felt when pointed at its own speaker.

“What’s happening to me?” she mumbled.

“I don’t know.” Miss James sounded worried, but her tone was… there was… it was hard to think too deeply about anything Colleen was observing. She focused on the woman’s words, instead. “I should never have showed you that book. I’m sorry.”

“No, I need to keep reading. At least to the end of the chapter, so I don’t lose my place.”

“It’s not healthy to – ”

“It’s mine!”

“What do you mean by that?” Miss James asked quietly.

“I don’t know, exactly.” Colleen was aware that she wasn’t in a normal frame of mind. An hour ago, she wouldn’t have felt this attached to a book, no matter how good it was. But she also knew that what she was saying was true. “I just need it to do my job properly. I need to be able to know what’s in it.”

“Is it safe, Colleen?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, you can’t know anything if you’re dead, can you? That thing knocked you out. If you go too quickly, you might die before you finish it.”

That was a good point. If she died, she wouldn’t be able to learn the truths in the book. But she also wouldn’t learn them if she didn’t read it.

“Look. I don’t think you should touch that thing again. Part of my job is looking out for your safety, and that book isn’t safe. But it’s not really my place to stop you, so how about we make a deal. I’ll hold onto it, and you can come here and read it a little bit at a time. I’ll be here to stop you from getting hurt, and to call an ambulance if you need it. We’ll take breaks between sessions, so you can recover and be mentally strong enough to understand the next part. Does that sound reasonable?”

“Yeah,” Colleen said. “Okay.” She wanted the book now, but… but if it would still be available in the future, there was no need for that kind of desperation. She relaxed a little.

“Excellent.” Miss James pulled out a notebook of paper made from pine pulp, manufactured in Australia, cut and assembled into a notebook in China. “Now, to help me best help you… tell me exactly what you’re experiencing right now.”

\------------------------

There was something in the tunnels, Trevor was certain of it.

The younger ones could smell it, but didn’t seem too bothered. Something rotting, or some gas pocket; probably not healthy to breathe, but they wouldn’t be here long, anyway.

Trevor knew better. He’d been doing this a long time, and he knew what evil smelled like. There was something hunting them in the tunnels, and it wasn’t the clean sort of stalking or trapping that he was used to. Maybe it was the confusion of the tunnels themselves, impossible to navigate too deeply, but this adversary seemed to move in a way that was… fluid. Not hunting them, perhaps. But eager to have them all the same.

So Trevor went hunting it instead.

He could tell that their enemy wasn’t in any particular hurry. This wasn’t something that he needed to distract the others with, when they were all busy distracting Jonah with their faux assault plan. He’d find it first, and then go back for them if he needed them. But finding something that kept moving around unpredictably, in a tunnel network that also kept moving around, was a slow process. Trevor got the sense that the thing knew the tunnels better than he did – not surprising. He suspected that these tunnels were probably full of monsters, ready to pop up all over London and grab the unwary.

He found traces of it in pools of bad-smelling water, in soft and crumbling patches on the walls. And in the bugs. The tunnel network had quite a lot of bugs, and more and more of them died the closer he got to the source of the problem. This was worrying. All he could do was hope that the source of it was something they could actually kill.

So he was relieved to find, wandering the tunnels… a man. Or something the shape of a man, anyway; Trevor had spent a lifetime being careful not to assume humanity. He was short, with a very round head, and hair missing in patches. He stood still in Trevor’s torchlight, yellowed eyes staring at the light as if transfixed.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, he headed for Trevor at a dead run.

Trevor raised his gun and shot the man. He knew he’d hit the heart, but it didn’t seem to matter – the man kept running for him, greenish blood… no, pus? Were his vein just full of puss?… drenching his threadbare shirt. Trevor, knowing that there was no way he could run at that pace long enough for it to matter, didn’t waste time trying; he dropped the gun, drew his longest knife, and as soon as the thing was in range, slashed at its throat.

He wasn’t interested in the jugular; if bullets to the heart didn’t matter, and there was no blood in there, then cutting off blood to the brain was irrelevant. He was aiming for major muscles and tendons, and his cut was true, snapping the creature’s head to the left as its ability to maintain tension in the other side of its neck was suddenly lost. It didn’t regenerate immediately, meaning that Trevor might have some hope of surviving this, but he didn’t dwell on that. Hope was a distraction that got you killed. Plan to maximise chances of survival, but don’t get distracted believing in them, that was the way.

Its head to the left, it couldn’t maintain proper sight of him or bite; Trevor stepped to its right, which was now a massive blind spot, and went for the bicep before it could turn. But Trevor wasn’t as fast as he used to be; he sliced through most of the muscle but couldn’t dodge the blind lashing out of the creature’s left arm, which scraped across his head. He flinched back, and…

And the creature ran.

So it had some intelligence, then.

Trevor didn’t wait around to see if it was gearing up for a charge or something. As soon as it was out of sight, he ran, too, turning off his light and letting the echo of his own footsteps prevent him from running into any walls. Only when he was back at their home base did he stop to inspect his throbbing head.

Four deep scratches where the thing’s hand had slashed him. One of them still had a fingernail embedded in the wound. He pulled it out and found it wet and slick not only with his own blood, but with watery pus.

Trevor cleaned the wounds as thoroughly as possible, more thoroughly than was probably good for fast healing. But he couldn’t stop thinking of the sense of rot and infection about that creature, about how it had been brimming with pus, and how his wounds already stung and felt hot. Maybe that was the agitation of cleaning and the disinfecting cream. But it sure felt just like a moderately advanced infection.

This was probably not a great sign.


	150. Chapter 150

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colleen Sees something important. Tim discusses vampires (the fictional kind, not Trevor's kind).

Colleen explained, and Miss James took notes with a pen that had enough ink left to make one point six three two kilometres of inked line. It was easiest not to look at what she was writing, because then she might look at her hands, and then she might glance up at her face, and then her head would try to tear itself open.

No looking directly at people while she was like this, Colleen decided. There was too much inside them.

Colleen knew that this acuity would fade pretty quickly. It was a wound in her perception that would close in about three to five minutes, depending. It hurt, but… but when you exercised, you damaged the muscles a little and they healed stronger. And when you wanted to Know, to be the Archivist…

Already, she had a head clear enough head to realise that it was a good thing that Miss James had taken the book after she’d passed out. It would have been very dangerous to keep reading.

She finished explaining and fell silent, and Miss James nodded and snapped the notebook shut. The leather cover, made from the skin of a cow that had been three years and two months old at the time of its death, thudded softly against the oak table as she put it down.

“You’re probably quite tired,” she said gently. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

“That’s… probably a good idea. I just… I’ll get my things from the archives and go.”

“Are you alright to travel?”

“I’ll be fine by the time I get to the front door.”

Miss James looked like she was going to suggest that Colleen should rest for a bit, but Colleen was already walking out of her office. She heard the woman fall in step behind her, probably to make sure she didn’t fall down any stairs or pass out in the elevator. She followed her all the way down to the bottom floor, where Colleen’s vision started to settle a little better. Not long now, and things would be normal.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked.

“Yes, I – ” Colleen stopped talking. She’d just spotted a few security guards, which wasn’t unusual (the institute was very well defended), except… two of them were human, disorienting to focus on, although not as much as Miss James. And the thing between them was… some kind of construct. Something made of human parts, or something very much like them, but not human, any more than a leather jacket was a cow. Colleen pointed at the thing, which turned its flesh-covered skull towards her and contorted its meat into a polite smile. “I see you!” she declared. “I see what you are!”

Miss James, alarmed, turned to look, and the thing reached into its own stomach and pulled out… a gun? Yes, a gun! It didn’t bleed or trail viscera; it raised the shiny, clean gun in a clean hand and fired at them. The two women leapt out of the way, while the two other security guards tackled the monster. It fired three times before the gun was wrestled from it; one went wild, one grazed Colleen’s arm, one sank deep into Miss James’ thigh. It was stronger than the security guards, and apparently immune to their tasers, but then Miss James pulled a mirror out of her pocket that seemed to glow with Truth and shone that glow on it and it started to _melt_ , screaming as the mask that was its face fell away.

One of the security guards held the monster to the floor, arm up against its back in an immobilising hold; it rolled out from under him, simply leaving the arm behind, like a lizard dropping its tail, and bolted for the door. 

One of the guards bolted after the monster, but it was obvious that it was too late.

“Well, then,” Miss James gasped in pain, carefully tucking the dangerous little mirror away. She looked to the remaining guard. “I don’t suppose I can trouble you to alert the Institute’s medical team?”

\------------------

  
  


“So that plan didn’t go amazingly, then?” Tim tried not to look at Mary as they made their way down the tunnel. She was clearly hurt, in whatever way her kind could be hurt – no open wounds, but her movements were jerky, and her features smooth, undetailed. Like she was unfinished. Or like a mannequin. Like the things he’d stood there, unmoving, and watched, while – 

Tim got a grip on himself. Mary was his friend. She had nothing to do with what had happened to Danny; she hadn’t even existed when that had happened. If you were attacked by a dog, it wasn’t reasonable to blame all dogs for it.

It was reasonable to develop a fear of dogs, though. Tim didn’t look, and tried not to let on that he was afraid.

“Sorry,” Mary mumbled, raising a smooth, false hand to shield her smooth, false face from view, because she could sense his fear, of course she could, Tim was an idiot.

He sighed. “Why? I thought you liked causing fear.”

“Yes, but I know it’s uncomfortable for you.”

Tim laughed hollowly. “Our whole little group dynamic is just a fucking disaster from start to finish, isn’t it?”

Mary didn’t respond to that.

“You’ll heal, right?”

“Yes. I think so. I don’t know how long it will take, or whether I will be quite the same Mary, but…”

“Everyone changes.”

“Yes.” Mary sighed. “I don’t know why you guys still put up with me. I try to be of use – ”

“You’re our friend, Mary.”

“You don’t like being around me! I’m scary, and humans hate scary things!”

“That’s not… really true? Too much fear is uncomfortable, especially if there’s real, actual danger, but… lots of humans like horror movies, or roller coasters. Or our games out at the cottage, where I’d chase you down and you’d circle around to startle me? They were fun, right?”

“So.. humans do like being afraid?”

“Everyone is different. Most humans like small, safe amounts of fear under circumstances that they have control over. Too much fear is awful, but we’ve kind of had to deal with that since we started working in the archives, so…” 

“So I do make things worse. You don’t like what you’re feeling right now, do you?”

“Mary. You know how I used to work in publishing?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, we did textbooks, but I also did some freelance editing on the side, and I had a friend in the paranormal market who kept sending me vampire stories. There’s this whole section of the paranormal genre, right, where a vampire makes friends with humans, or falls in love with a human, or has human parents, or something… there’s usually some destiny or vampire politics plot providing the tension, but the chief draw of these stories is these humans and vampires, who should be predator and prey, forming close relationships. There’s always this part early on where the vampire is injured or starving or fleeing hunters or something and the human helps them out, then later the vampire protects the human… I’m sure you’ve read some of them. Anyway, in about eighty per cent of these stories, there’s a part later on where the vampire is in trouble. Wounded, usually, protecting their human friends, and they’re trapped with said friends somehow – imprisoned by an enemy or in hiding or just too injured to move, depending on the story. And their human friend, at this point in the story, makes the decision to feed them their own blood. This is a risky thing to do – there’s usually some kind of supernatural risk involved, or an infection risk, or the chance that the vampire might lose control and kill them, and even if none of that is there, losing blood is still a pretty big deal, physiologically. There’s discomfort and sacrifice involved, and the vampire is always like, ‘you don’t have to do this’, and the human insists, because their friend’s wellbeing is more important. Their friendship is important, and it’s worth a little risk and discomfort, and if that’s just a part of their relationship by virtue of who the two members in it are, well, that’s just how it is. They’re not going to abandon them over a little discomfort.

“Any time my friend sent me a vampire story, I always hoped it’d have this scene in it. It was always my absolute favourite part of the story. Two people saying that their relationship is fucked up, but that’s fine. It’s worth it.”

T im snuck a glance at Mary. Her stiff, plasticky face looked to be frozen in a slight smile, now.

Trevor and Julia were already at their home base, and the sight of Trevor’s face was enough to derail Tim’s train of thought. “Trevor? What happened?”

“Got attacked by a zombie,” he grunted. “Never mind me, what happened to you?”

“You got _attacked_ by a _zombie_?”

“Some kind of dead thing, anyway. In the tunnels. Why does your monster look like a cheap mannequin?”

“Cover was blown,” Mary said. “The new Archivist noticed me. There was a bit of a tussle.”

“You manage to kill your target?”

“No. I tried, but I was being tackled and didn’t want to hit anyone else. I had to get out of there when she pulled some kind of artefact on me. A mirror that strips away masks, it… wasn’t pleasant.”

“Told you that thing’s personhood was just an illusion,” Julia remarked to Tim.

“So is yours,” Mary snapped. “You just don’t have to invent your own meat to put it in.”

“Wait,” Tim said, “the new Archivist noticed you?”

“Yes. Name’s Colleen. Seems very nice, from what I’ve seen of her.”

“But she has to be new, right? Jon and Martin didn’t develop any powers for ages. How can she be able to See you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she already had Beholding powers before she was hired? Anyway, we’re going to need a new plan.”

Tim swore quietly. He looked back to Trevor. “So, this zombie.”

“Been skulking around the tunnels since we got here. Hunting us, I think. I went to track it down, but I didn’t manage to kill it.”

“It bite you?”

“Scratched me. No idea if it’s going to be a problem or not.”

“I’ve stolen as many different kinds of antibiotics as I could get my hands on,” Julia said. “There might be no problem, but if it’s infected…”

“When you say ‘zombie’,” Tim said, “if it does get… infected… do you know if it’ll…?” he tapped his own temple.

“I have no idea if that thing was in its right mind,” Trevor said. “And if not, I have no idea if that had anything to do with its infection. All I know is there’s a walking corpse out there and I’m either dying or I’m not.”

“This might be a stupid question,” Mary piped up, “but have you considered going to the actual hospital?”

T he group was silent for awhile.

“I think maybe I should take him to hospital,” Julia said.

“Fantastic idea.”

Tim accompanied them to the tunnel entrance nearest the hospital, just in case this zombie showed up again.  His phone buzzed.

** TheAdmiralsLady has sent you a puzzle! **

Oh, right. He’d forgotten about Turtle Run.

This should prove interesting.


	151. Chapter 151

Martin handed Daisy her cup of tea and went to get his own. His left hand was entirely useless, now; the paralysis had moved up his forearm. Was he imagining it, or was this faster than its progression in the archives? Maybe the Eye had been shielding him a little even then, even though he hadn’t been the Archivist. Or maybe this was the normal rate of progression, and it had seemed slower because he’d kept reversing it by doing Spider things.

He absolutely could not afford to do Spider things. He’d been used as a tool to try to destroy the world once, he would not fall into the trap of being used by something whose entire schtick was manipulation. (Unless that’s what the Spider wanted him to think; unless – no. Don’t get caught in that kind of thought trap. Just enjoy life, and don’t break the world.)

He sat down and sipped his own tea. “This whole isolation thing kind of sucks, doesn’t it?” he said conversationally to Daisy. “I wish we could, you know, join a club or something. Make some new friends.”

“When Jonah’s dealt with, we can,” Daisy said. “Anyone we get close to right now – ”

“Is in danger if he sends someone after us, I know,” Martin sighed. “You miss everyone, too, though.”

“Doesn’t matter how I feel. We need to stay out of the way.”

“You want to go help, though, don’t you?”

“Of course I… look, they’re all extremely capable. We can trust them. And I need to protect you.”

“Of all of us, I think I’m the safest, actually. He’s more likely to go for you, being that you’ve got a history of actually hunting down and killing people. I’ve never exactly been a threatening guy.”

“You did put him in jail. And you know his plan and could tell people.”

“So do you. If any of us were going to do that, don’t you think we would’ve done it already? He knows that. I’m just saying, if we went back, I’m not the one who’d be in danger. I can look after myself – ”

“Absolutely nothing you have done in the time since I met you has ever suggested that that is remotely the case.”

“ – and I know you’re not going to fight, I get it, but being out here and not knowing what’s going on is killing you, isn’t it? We’re both on limited time here; we should at least be with – ”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop trying to manipulate me. Stop trying to talk my into things as part of some stupid big plan.”

“I’m not! I don’t have some plan!”

“Does the thing in your arm have one?”

“… what?”

“I’m just saying, we’re sitting here and all of a sudden you want to go back to London, to the centre of action, and you’re trying to pull on my emotions to do that. Are you sure that’s you talking?”

“I… I don’t…” Martin rubbed at his arm. He just wanted both of them to be with their loved ones, for the limited time they might have left. That’s how he felt.

Wasn’t it?

The first time the Spider’s power had worked through him, he’d had no idea what was happening. This time, he was fully aware that it was there. But did that matter? Could he know what thoughts were his own, and what thoughts were part of someone’s agenda?

Given that everything was a product of its environment, was there really a difference? A thought could be his own and be useful to a bigger plan; didn’t that mean that his own thoughts and feelings were just as dangerous as false ones? Was he going to have to second-guess everything he said, did, and felt, looking for conspiracy? Because that just felt more like serving the Spider. 

Martin sipped his tea, and said nothing.

\------------------

  
  


Hammond stitched his neck back together and experimentally turned his head from side to side. It seemed to be holding.

That Watcher hadn’t told him he’d be up against experienced fighters. Usually, people put bullets in Hammond’s heart, gut or brain, and he’d taken some good clean bites before they could get to anything else. But that man had found his weaknesses immediately, which didn’t bode well. 

Not that he was surprised that the Watcher had left things out. Perhaps she didn’t know, although Watchers were always so smug about knowing so much. More likely, she just hadn’t bothered to inform him. He had always secretly despised her, sitting gluttonous and unmoving in that Institute, taking fresh bodies as she pleased with no respect for the process, no respect for the Rot. You couldn’t just take whole bodies and discard what you didn’t need; that was a spit in the face of the natural order. True communion, true life, true rebirth and cyclic immortality only came with the Rot. The Watcher had to understand that on some level, or she wouldn’t have understood the value in the essence of pollution she had paid him with, and yet she turned her back on it. Disgusting.

No point in riling himself up thinking about her, though. Hammond needed to attend to his own Rot. His whole being thrummed with the power of the Watcher’s payment, but there wasn’t much he could do with the energy if he had no raw materials. He had been losing skin; he needed more.  He recalled, briefly, his old laboratory days, back when he was first researching and discovering the glories of the Rot, before it had started to share its secrets with him under the microscope, to whisper to him about what he could be – back when skin, next to vascular tissue, had been one of the easiest human tissues to grow. The reversal of affairs in his current state was kind of funny, in a way.

He’d hoped to get at least a couple of mouthfuls off is target in the tunnel, perhaps a full feast if he’d managed to kill him outright,  some fresh living skin for the Rot to consume and remake and build as skin on his own body, after taking its own commission. Nails, too; they were so easy to lose. And brains. It had been almost a full year since Hammond had gotten some fresh human brains, and he knew that what was left of his was struggling to keep up without adding new cells. The Watcher’s payment helped, but eventually his brain would deteriorate to the point where even that couldn’t compensate for the drop in his intelligence and reaction time. He needed some fresh brains before that happened. And maybe a heart, too; the Rot could move about without a pulse, bacteria motoring through capillaries with their little flagellae, the cute little things, but it was so much easier and took so much less energy if he had a heart to pump for them.

He experimentally twisted his head again. The Rot was already congealing around the stitches, knitting muscle fibres together, thinning them ever so slightly as it took its due. He would replenish it soon.

There were four living human bodies full of fresh materials that he could harvest.

\-------------------------

  
  


Peter stood on the deck of the Tundra and wondered, once more, whether he should help Elias. Or Sasha, he supposed. Elias had been so insistent on the name thing when he’d moved on from James, as if somebody was going to show up, overhear them talking, and accuse him of being a body hopping eighteenth-century nobleman based on name alone. Paranoid bastard. 

Technically, Sasha hadn’t even really wanted him to do much. Just put his considerable fortune behind tracking down his ex-Archivist’s little crew of attack dogs. But Peter had seen the writing on the wall for his own apprentice, and of course had dealt with protecting her first, because he wasn’t going to let Sasha’s tantrum cost the Lonely a perfectly good servant. He’d convinced Simon to check up on her, costing him a favour that he’d rather liked having over his head, so maybe he shouldn’t help, just through sheer pettiness alone. What was the better move? If Sasha was going to win, it was better to have helped, and have her owe him a favour. If she was going to lose, though, then getting involved was just a further waste of resources. And is would be politics. More and more bothersome politics. He hated politics.

Peter gave the order and went below deck. The sea was calling.

\------------------------

  
  


Basira observed the troops.

Mary, badly wounded in some way that Basira couldn’t understand. She insisted that she would heal, but she didn’t know how long it would take, and she certainly couldn’t go out in public for awhile. Trevor, discharged from the hospital with fresh bandages and some strong antibiotics, told to return if they didn’t work. Basira knew that he wouldn’t be going back if they didn’t work. If they didn’t work, that meant he might be facing a problem that the hospital was in no way equipped to deal with. Tim and Julia, uninjured bot very worried, eyes constantly roving for a ‘zombie’ that might attack the group from the shadows. And, of course, Basira herself.

Georgie and Melanie were coming back to town, but not there yet. They planned to stay well clear of the tunnels and communicate only via Turtle Run. Better, they claimed, to look like they weren’t involved at all, in case the group needed an element of surprise against Jonah Magnus.

Basira didn’t like it. Outside the tunnels, and without any of Manuela’s Dark stones, the two had nothing to shield them from Jonah’s Sight. She thought it was safer for them to be a known enemy but invisible, than stay out in the open and hope he didn’t see them as a threat worth squashing. He’d already attacked them once. 

And the tunnel team were down two troops. And there was apparently an Archivist in the Institute who could already See things, or who had seen through Mary, at any rate.  Which meant that they didn’t have anyone who could easily get inside the building, which meant that their viable plans came down to 1) full-on assault or 2) hope that they could catch Jonah outside the Institute and be able to kill him through luck alone. Since they hadn’t seen him leave the Institute in over a week, that probably wasn’t happening.

They needed a new plan, and they needed it fast.


	152. Chapter 152

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha does some Watching. Trevor does some Hunting. The podcasters do some podcasting.

“So do you want to tell our listeners what’s been happening this past week, Melanie?”

“I sure do! First, you might note that the audio quality is better this week. Have we defeated the evil seer? No, but we have found a hiding spot, so that’s something. By the way, evil seer, if you’re listening: fuck you. Also, shout out to Mr Fairchild for the rescue, but know that we still despise you and everything about your life choices, although I’m sure you don’t care. Listeners, never do any kind of extreme sports with anyone named Fairchild; those are words to live by. Any other magic sociopaths you have a message for, Georgie?”

“Peter Lukas.”

“Oh right, of course! Honestly, the whole Lukas family is such a treasure to any community they find themselves in. Guys, today we’re projecting vibes of love, appreciation and friendship to Captain Peter Lukas of the Tundra, who spends to much time lone at sea and deserves a nice big hug of appreciation when he gets on land. He’s a bit shy so shouldn’t be approached directly if you ever do meet the guy, but I feel strongly that he deserves to be in everyone’s thoughts and prayers regardless. In fact, for the rest of this episode we’ll be sprinkling in random Peter Lukas facts, so you can all get to know my wonderful mentor a little bit better. For example: did you know that Peter Lukas can’t pronounce the word ‘excel’ and simply calls it ‘the spreadsheet program’?”

“I’m sure they didn’t, Melanie, because nobody listening to this has any fucking clue who Peter Lukas is.”

“Not yet, but by the end of this episode, I’m sure they’ll know all of his endearing little quirks and feel like he’s been a friend for years.”

“I’m sure they will. In the meantime, we’ve got another great spooky story for you all, but before we get to that, we’ve got a special treat – the debut of a brand new song by Anybody’s Game, written yesterday, which tells you what quality to expect. This is ‘Ode to Peter Lukas, King of the High Seas’ by Anybody’s Game.”

\----------------

  
  


S asha Watched her Archivist reading.

Not from the same room. After Colleen had spotted that Stranger infiltrator, Sasha had taken care to keep her distance when she was reading from the book. It wouldn’t do to have her glance at Sasha and Know the wrong thing. Sasha had been very careful about the exact combination of half-truths to tell her about what had happened to Martin and didn’t want to destabilise anything now. Deceiving a servant of the Watcher was, as Sasha knew, a delicate and dangerous game and there was no room for missteps when it came to leaking information, even to someone as new and naive and trusting as Colleen. 

Although Colleen would probably die quite soon. Her powers were growing at a rate that couldn’t possibly be healthy. She was compelling people already! Of course, she also had persistent headaches, couldn’t seem to tolerate loud sounds or bright lights, and couldn’t keep her attention on anything except a statement for any decent length of time, but when one opened a mind to the Knowledge of the universe one expected certain side effects. So far as Sasha could tell, Colleen was damaging her ability to filter out or prioritise information,  instead just drawing it all in, seeing all and comprehending none… or she would, when the process was complete. Her mind started to settle back to normal when she stopped reading, although the symptoms were more severe and lasted longer every time. Sasha suspected that if she locked the thing away for a month or so, Colleen’s mind would heal properly.

But there was no reason to do that. Sasha had other candidates if Colleen died, and she really wanted to see just how well Colleen’s mind would adapt, just how much power the book could give her. Being able to compel so quickly was  _fascinating_ . So she allowed Colleen access every few days. 

The great part was that Sasha wasn’t even doing anything. Not that she’d feel guilty about pushing this pain and danger on Colleen, but she didn’t have to; Colleen always wanted to read more, and asked for the book just about every day. She was doing it to herself, as the Library had always intended, and the Library was as quiet and satisfied as it had been since Sasha had acquired it.

Colleen was also the third archival candidate sent her way already marked by the Spider. Sasha hadn’t missed that little detail.

The real question was, should she trust th at assistance ? Were the loss of Jon and Martin simply unavoidable, things that even the powers of the Web couldn’t prevent entirely? That seemed likely; the Web had no direct power over death, so there was little to be done for Jon, and Martin’s decision had been between him and the Eye. There were risks in this game, and while the Spider’s strings were everywhere, she was not omnipotent. And Martin and Colleen had both been such well-suited replacements, marked by a handful of powers already. It certainly seemed helpful.

But you could never really tell with the Spider. Sasha might be being led along in some bigger game, although she had no idea what it might be.

She was going to need more information.

\--------------------------------

  
  


Trevor’s infection wasn’t getting any better.

They cleaned the bandages every day. They tried every antibiotic that Julia had stolen. They tried cleaning the wound with fresh water, with alcohol, with petrol and kerosine from the supplies they’d bought to make it look to Jonah like they were going to assault the Institute. Preserving his flesh didn’t matter; if the scratch had been on his arm instead of his face, he would’ve cut it off. All that mattered was burning out the infection.

Julia said it looked like it was getting better, but Trevor knew she was lying. This thing was hostile in a way that went beyond a mundane infection; it wasn’t hostile simply in the sense of bacteria finding somewhere to breed and feed. If was hostile to him, specifically, in a decidedly unnatural way. He could feel it.

When he felt it moving in behind his eyes and into his sinuses, he knew there was no  chance left. Which gave them an opportunity. If he was the walking dead, then technically, there was no risk to him having a go at the bastard who’d done this to him. 

“I think it’s starting to clear up,” Julia said for the third morning in a row. “If we keep up all the antibiotics, we might be able to beat this thing. There, the wound’s clean.”

He could smell the strange not-quite-rot scent of the pus on the old bandages. If was stronger than yesterday.

“I think you’re right, Jule,” he grinned. “I feel stronger today. I’m gonna patrol the tunnels again.”

“I’ll come with you, in case – ”

“Nah, wait here for the others. They might worry if they get back and find us missing. I won’t be long.” He headed into the little cave they used as a storeroom for all their Fake Assault Mission stuff, all the weapons and explosives they’d collected while Jonah presumably watched. Trevor had a thick woollen jumper and a long, heavy leather coat in there. They absolutely reeked of petrol, but they’d easily be enough to stop any teeth or fingernails. Julia followed him in in time to see him carefully slide some of the bigger knives into his belt. “Just in case there’s trouble,” he explained.

“Just in case.”

“Yeah.” He slipped the other essentials into his coat pockets, and gave her a hug. “Hold everything together until I get back, right?”

“Until you get back.”

“Yeah.”

“Trevor…”

“What is it, Jule?”

“Don’t forget, there’s a world of things out there after your blood.”

He nodded. It was one of the first things he’d taught her, back when they were starting out. He finished the adage. “So it’s your job to make that blood as expensive as you can.” He smiled. “It’s alright, Jule. I’m just going on a little patrol.”

“I’ll guard the camp until you get back.”

“Just like old times.” He headed off down the tunnel.

Despite his age, Trevor’s hearing was still extremely good. He heard Julia start crying behind him.

Finding the ‘zombie’ wasn’t hard. It was, in fact, suspiciously easy; Trevor had a sense of where to go, like the infection in his own body was trying to go home. Was it in his brain yet? It was in his ears and eyes and nose, at least. He could hear its song, drawing him home. No, drawing _it_ home. He _was_ the home. 

He wasn’t surprised to see the man, when he caught up to him. And the man wasn’t surprised to see him. He smiled, showing rotten teeth, and walked towards Trevor, arms out. Trevor opened his own arms, holding open his leather jacket, inviting him close. The man slipped his arms around Trevor under the jacket, embracing him. Trevor closed his arms around the man, holding him tight. For a few seconds, the position could be easily mistaken for an affectionate embrace.

Then the man’s arms squeezed tight so that Trevor couldn’t flee, and he sank his teeth into Trevor’s neck, tearing into the flesh. Trevor held firm. He held the jacked closed with one hand and fished is lighter out of his pocket with the other, slipping his hand into the small hole he’d cut in the jacked for this purpose, and lighting up the lighter fluid his woollen shirt and the wool lining of his coat were soaked in.

There weren’t very many liquids that you could buy on the open market that burned with minimal oxygen, at least not that you could buy in great quantities. But Trevor had been doing this for a long time; he knew what to look for. And they’d been stocking up fake Institute assault supplies for a while.  Trevor had learned early in his career that for all people talked about wooden stakes and special bullets, about ninety per cent of monsters were vulnerable to good old-fashioned fire, if you could make enough of it. So he tried to always make sure he could make plenty, if it were called for.

And now his job, his only job, was to not let the walking pile of infection in his arms out of the jacket until it was dead. He locked his arms and legs firmly around it, hoping they’d stay that way in death, because he would certainly die long before it did. Already, he couldn’t see, hear, feel anything but the agony of burning, and soon not even that.

He’d done well enough, he thought. He’d taken a lot of evil out of the world before it got him. He’ d made his blood very, very expensive. 

Which was about all you could do, in this world.


	153. Chapter 153

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New developments force Martin into a corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains discussion of suicide

The sun warmed the kitchen, and Martin made tea. 

He poured it into two cups, holding the kettle in his right hand, and spooned in honey with his left. Then he froze.

His left hand.

There was a chance that this was a good sign. Maybe the Spider had left him.

He very much didn’t think that was the case. Forces like that don’t just decide to leave you alone, not in Martin’s experience. Anyway, the fact that he’d started using a hand that had been paralysed for almost two weeks without even realising what he was doing was… worrying. He remembered building concept maps and dismissing his ‘fungal infection’ without really thinking about it. 

He clenched his fist. Opened it again. It felt normal, like his muscles were pulling on the tendons in his fingers to puppet them, just like a normal hand. He rubbed his hand, and the skin felt… not sticky, exactly, but like it  _should_ feel sticky.

“Daisy?”

“Mmm?”

“Can you come and look at my hand?”

She did, inspecting it carefully under her phone light. “Yeah, those cobwebs are on the outside, now.”

Martin remembered discussions he’d had with an IT guy, about prosthetics. About designing little lines and pulleys, like external tendons to control fingers. “Running down the front and back of each finger?” he asked.

“Yeah. And spread out across the hand.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Martin went to scrub his hands. This was a bad sign. This was a very bad sign. If the Spider wanted to paralyse him bit by bit to try to scare him into embracing the Web, he could deal with that; he simply needed to refuse to act. He’d weighed up the world against his own life and he was confident in his choice. But if it was giving him his motion back through these little puppet strings, then that was a whole new ball game.

Because this was the Web. Puppetry and manipulation was what it did. Meaning it was pretty likely that somebody else could pull those strings, too.  And that wasn’t something that he could afford to wait out. He had to be proactive. He had to remove an extremely dangerous potential pawn from the table before it came fully under the control of the Web, before the Web could use him in whatever twisted version of Jonah’s ritual it had devised. And that… well. Martin didn’t want to die. He really didn’t. But he’d already decided that the world was more important, so if he had to be… proactive about it… 

It was no different. No different. He could do this.

God, he didn’t want to do this. But he could do this.

He washed his hands until he couldn’t move any part of the left one any more. But he knew the webs would be back. And they’d spread along with the paralysis. Until he was completely paralysed, and the webs… and whatever force had been in that old film and started all this could… 

Actually, even if the world hadn’t been at stake, there were still some fates worse than death. But he would need to be thorough.

He needed a plan.

\--------------------

  
  


“Close the door,” Manuela demanded as soon as Melanie peeked in. Melanie rolled her eyes and came into the room so that she could do so, blocking out the feeble beam of light from upstairs. She dropped her stack of paper on the little table next to the door, because she wasn’t going to walk across a pitch-dark creepy horror lab and potentially bump into… whatever the hell Manuela was working on, that could probably eat her or something.

“Printouts of the four stories we’ve received featuring Dark stuff,” she announced. “I don’t see anything in them that might be Raynor, but I figure you’ll want to check for yourself.”

“Of course.”

“If you give me your email address, I could just send these straight to you, you know.”

“Paper is fine. Is there anything else? I’m very busy.”

“There’s also a fifth story there. I’ve marked it. It’s fake. But it does mention a shadow spirit taking over someone’s body, so if it’s a heard-this-from-a-friend thing then there might be truth somewhere in – ”

“Good. Yes. Thank you.”

That was the first time Manuela had thanked her for anything. It was also the first possible hint they’d found of Raynor, so that made sense. Melanie felt weird about helping to find Raynor, even though she shouldn’t – she was dead certain the man was dead, no matter what Manuela hoped, so there was no harm in paying for shelter with a bit of harmless detective work. Even if he wasn’t, the People’s Church were in no shape to attempt another ritual for a good long while, and their chances of being able to figure out what Jonah had to build a potentially successful one were remote at best.

Maybe she was just nervous about seeking sanctuary with people who would happily sacrifice her to their Dark god without a moment’s hesitation. But between Jonah and Peter, what else was new?

Melanie left the creepy basement lab. Ten years ago, she would not have predicted her life taking this direction.

\----------------------------

  
  


Daisy had always been an early riser. So she wasn’t surprised to not hear Martin when she got up in the morning. She’d give him another half hour, then go and wake him with a cup of tea. 

When she got to the kitchen, she saw his laptop sitting open on the table. She was sure he hadn’t left it out last night. She woke it up, and there was, of course, a word document open; maybe he’d gotten up early to write some poetry?

Not poetry. A letter. To her.

Daisy swore, snatched up  her outdoor coat and the Dark stone she used to hide from Jonah, and ran for the door.

\-----------------------

  
  


Martin sat alone on the train, listening to the calm robot voice announce the next stop. It’d be a while yet. He was going all the way to the end of the line.

He hadn’t been out and about in town alone. Being in an unfamiliar place and a potential target of whatever allies Jonah could conjure up made solo exploration dangerous enough, and there was also the not inconsiderable fact that he wasn’t completely used to being blind. Being blind, lost in an unfamiliar city, and a potential target of Jonah’s allies… yeah. Usually, he and Daisy went shopping together. But the danger wasn’t relevant right now. In fact, an attack could save him a task he really, really wasn’t looking forward to.

If he’d still belonged to the Beholding, this would all be very simple. He could take sleeping pills or, if he has the stomach for it, take a knife to the arteries in his throat. But the cobwebs growing up his arm complicated matters. He wasn’t entirely certain that his death would stop them from moving his body through whatever little ritual they pleased. Whatever he did, he needed to be certain that he didn’t leave the cobwebs to keep growing. And the one thing that all of the statements suggested the Web was particularly vulnerable to, was fire.

Which was why Martin’s backpack contained not just an entire packet of the strongest painkillers he could buy without a prescription, but two thermoses full of lighter fluid. He didn’t want to set the apartment alight, so he was going to the beach, which should be abandoned enough in the day’s terrible weather for him to easily find a concealed spot to… get on with things. His only major concern was getting the timing wrong. He couldn’t risk the chance that he’d pass out before setting himself alight, meaning that  if he was unsure, he was going to have to err on the side of early, rather than late. He might feel the flames.

He wasn’t looking forward to that.

\------------------

  
  


Nobody got in Daisy’s way as she barrelled through the train station. There was no point in hurrying, she knew. Martin was already gone, was already on a train, meaning no matter how fast she was, she was going to at least one train behind Martin. She was going to be too late.

Her one job had been to protect him, and now she was going to be too late.

\--------------------

  
  


Martin tried not to dwell too much on what was going to happen when he reached his destination.  The train stopped, people got off, people got on. Someone sat beside him.

“Hello, Martin,” she said, in a voice he didn’t recognise. Martin’s blood ran cold.

No; this was better. If one of Jonah’s lackeys did it for him… 

“We’re getting off at the next stop,” she said. Her hand brushed his, and with the contact, he understood their relationship – this woman was a sister.

“Are you Annabelle Cane?” he asked.

“Does my name matter?”

“I suppose not,” he said, mentally designating her as Annabelle Cane until indicated otherwise. “But I can’t go with you. I have things to do.”

“Postpone them.” Her hand wrapped around his wrist. Martin briefly entertained the idea of trying to physically fight her, but even he knew that was ludicrous.

He had a knife in his pocket. A quick slice across his own throat… maybe the webs could still make use of his corpse, maybe not. He was running out of options. 

“Please don’t put me in a position where I have to traumatise a trainload of people,” he said quietly.

“That’s your decision. But we both know you’re going to come quietly with me. You want to hear what I have to say.”

“Not at the risk of the world.”

“Who says I have any designs on the world?”

“I’m not going to be your puppet.”

“I never claimed that you were.”

“Do you ever say anything except cryptic bullshit?”

“Do you ever say anything except wild accusations? I came here to give you clear answers, Martin, but not on a crowded train.”

The train stopped. Annabelle stood up, still holding Martin’s wrist. “Come on.”

“I’m not going to – ”

She sighed impatiently. “You are making a permanent decision based on woefully incomplete information. You have my promise; I am not here to interfere with your decision, just to make sure that you have enough information to make it. Hear me out, and if you’re still set on this path, I won’t stop you.”

“You want to tell me the right information that’ll make me decide to do what you want. Manipulate me.”

“By that definition, Martin, every conversation you’ve had in your entire life, every book you’ve read, every movie you’ve watched, is someone manipulating you. I am going to get off this train, and you already know you’re going to follow me, so if we could wrap this up before the doors close?”

They got off the train.

“Where are we going?” Martin asked as Annabelle lead him through nearly deserted streets.

“Just to church,” she said. “Here it is.” She lead him inside. “This church was once a haven for servants of the Dark. The wards are old, but intact enough for our purposes. Sasha James will not be able to See us in here.”

“So now…?”

“Yes, Martin. Now we can talk without the ‘cryptic bullshit’.”


	154. Chapter 154

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Annabelle talk.

T here were plenty of seats on the train, but Daisy couldn’t bring herself to sit down. She kept her eyes on the window, willing the train to go faster, to somehow intercept the train ahead. Maybe, maybe she could get him before he went through with it, interrupt him, call an ambulance… 

She clutched the stone in her pocket and clenched her teeth. Her pulse was loud and rapid in her hears. How dare he do this?! They were supposed to talk about things! He couldn’t just sneak off in the middle of the night and… it was her job to protect him, and he… 

There was something wrong with the stone in her pocket. She took it out and inspected it. It was black, yes, and the right size, but it didn’t have that oily feel that it was supposed to have, didn’t drink in the light of the train like a hole in the world.

This wasn’t a stone of Darkness. Someone had switched it.

Who? The only other person in the apartment had been Martin, but why would he do something like that? Had someone broken in, and she hadn’t noticed?

And when? How long had Jonah been able to see through her eyes?

What was going on?

\---------------------

  
  


“So,” Martin said.

“So,” Annabelle said.

“This is the part where you explain your big plan, then? Do your big speech and convince me to go along with it?”

“Why is everyone always so insistent that I must have a big plan?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Your whole Web thing.”

“Plans are for children learning the craft, and for the servants of other powers, who don’t know any better.”

“What? Isn’t the whole point – ?”

“Let me try an analogy. Have you ever played the computer game ‘tetris’?”

“Uh, yeah. Of course.”

“And when you played tetris, did you arrange things perfectly so that there would be a hole of the exact shape of a particular piece, and hope that piece would come? Or did you spread things out imperfectly, with flat areas and dips, so that there would be somewhere acceptable to place whatever comes? The second version results in a far more successful game. Sometimes, if the rewards are worth it, it is worth creating a complicated plan, like leaving a hole for a line piece to gain a Tetris. But in general, all creating a plan does is introduce a lot of unnecessary points of failure. It’s far better to arrange the board so that almost anything that happens will work in your favour.”

“And I’m one of your pieces on your board?”

“Everything is one of my pieces on the board, and one of yours, and one of everyone else’s. Newcomers often spend a lot of time stressing about whether they’re the puppet or the puppeteer, so let me fast-track that little existential crisis for you with the answer – everybody is both. But if you’re asking if I had anything to do with giving you to the Spider, then the answer is no. So far as I’m aware, although my knowledge is limited, this is something you did to yourself.” 

“That’s just coincidentally very useful to you, huh?”

“Was my tetris metaphor not clear enough? I go to great pains to make sure that as many things as possible are useful to me. Including you, which is why it would be rather a waste for you to kill yourself on faulty information.”

“You can’t force me to end the world for you.”

“I can’t? Then why kill yourself?”

“… what?”

“Isn’t that exactly what you’re so afraid of? That I’m going to force you to end the world? If I can’t, why kill yourself? What danger are you mitigating?”

“I… well, I…”

“Calm down, Martin. I have no intention of forcing you to do anything whatsoever.”

“Huh. Tricking me into – ”

Annabelle sighed impatiently. “You worked at that Institute for quite a while. Tell me, according to your records, when was the last time anybody tried to enact a Web ritual to end the world?”

Martin thought about that. Did they have any records of Web rituals? He couldn’t think of any, but that wasn’t surprising; for most of the rituals, they only had reports of the most recent attempts, and if the Web hadn’t made their attempt yet, if they were planning on using him… anyway, the Web was supposed to be subtle. 

“Given you’re supposed to be all subtle, the Institute probably wouldn’t even notice a failed Web attempt,” he said.

“Sometimes, you can’t find something because it is hidden, or unnoticed. Sometimes, you can’t find something because it isn’t there.”

“Wait, are you saying…?”

“I am saying that to my knowledge, which again is limited, no Web ritual has ever been attempted. Nor do I know anybody with any desire to attempt one now. What would be the point? Look at you, here in this world, a pawn of one apocalypse attempt and now so wrapped up in paranoia of conspiracies that you’re wrapping yourself in your own webs and convincing yourself it’s the work of somebody else. You’re a dramatic case, but not a unique one. Every person on this planet is puppet and puppeteer, full of thoughts of their own little plans and worries about everyone else’s, struggling with notions of their own free will and afraid of both the responsibility of having autonomy and the powerlessness of lacking it. The game is so rich and varied here, what Spider would want to end it? What Spider would risk creating a world that could very well be a lot worse? Had Jonah’s little experiment succeeded, I’m sure everybody would have found a way to adapt, but on balance, this world is so ripe with fear of the Web – and getting fuller, richer, every year – that there is a very real chance that even a successful apocalypse of our own would be a step backward. Why introduce so many points of failure for such uncertain rewards, when there is so much right here?”

“You want me to believe that you don’t want a Web apocalypse.”

“Ideally, yes, I would like you to believe that.”

“What, you just… don’t want to be all powerful? You, queen of complicated conspiracies?”

“I do not understand how these rumours get started about me. Nobody wants to win the game, Martin. If you win, the game is over. Winning is far better than losing, but best of all is to keep playing. I’m not here to manipulate or control you, Martin. Simply to give you the facts.”

“What, you’re just going to leave me to my own devices out of the goodness of your heart?”

“No, I’m going to leave you to your own devices because there is no need to do anything else. You have several options available to you now, and I believe that whatever you do will benefit us both a lot more if I’m not involved. I have better things to do than devote my energy to micromanaging you out of suicide for the rest of both of our lives, which I’m certain I would have to do if I tried to control you. I would like you as an ally, Martin. I can accept you as a neutral acquaintance who doesn’t want to work with me. But I very much do not want you as an enemy. It is a waste of both our energy and could very well get one of us killed. You don’t need me for any of this, and you never would have heard from me at all if it weren’t for me having to intervene with this little suicide plan of yours. I have provided you with some useful tools at the Institute that you may or may not choose to use, but I have no further intention of getting involved.”

“Yeah, see, here’s the thing – I don’t believe you. I can’t risk believing you.” 

“I was worried that that might be the case, which is why I’m having one of those aforementioned tools delivered. Ah; that should be her now.” Annabelle raised her voice. “Come in, Colleen. Neither of us are armed in any serious way.” 

The door opened. Martin heard a small group (three people, maybe?) enter.

“Ah, good,” Annabelle said. “You brought protection. Do they – ?”

“Shut up,” a familiar woman’s voice snapped. “I’m asking the questions here.”

“By all means.”

Martin place d the voice. “Colleen? Colleen McKenzie? What are you doing here?”

“What did I just say about questions?”

“You said that you’re the one asking them,” Martin answered immediately, without thinking about it, then realised what had happened. “You can compel the truth. Oh, Colleen, you didn’t! But how long have you – ?” He heard a gun being cocked, and shut up.

“Both of you will answer my questions. You will say nothing else. Talk out of turn, and my assistants will shoot you. I’m not letting either of you manipulate me with your creepy spider powers. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Martin and Annabelle said in unison. Martin desperately tried to get a mental grip on the situation. Colleen was the new Archivist; that made sense. But how had she learned to compel so quickly? Why was she here? What lies had Jonah told her, to make her so hostile to him?”

“This woman’s the one who tried to kill you, right?” a man that Martin didn’t know asked. “With the spiders? Shouldn’t we just kill her right now?”

“Not without information. Is your name Annabelle Cane?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about your plan to end the world.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I can’t lie to – ” Annabelle fell silent at a sudden movement from someone in the room.

“Maybe a more direct question?” the unknown man suggested.

“Right. Are you planning a Web ritual?”

“No.”

“Do you want to start a Web apocalypse?”

“No.”

“Then… then why did you send Martin to infiltrate the archives?”

“I didn’t.”

“… Martin. Do you work for Annabelle?”

“No. I mean, the Mother of Puppets is subtle, but this is the first time we’ve ever communicated.”

“But you do serve the Web?”

“Apparently. Not by choice.”

“Okay. So who were you infiltrating the Magnus Institute for?”

“Colleen, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never infiltrated the Magnus Institute for anyone. I took a job there because Elias offered it to me and I needed money.”

Colleen sounded as confused as Martin felt. “Did… did you even serve the Web then?”

“No.”

“Did you serve the Web when you spoke to me in your office?”

“No.”

There was a thoughtful pause. After a moment, Colleen asked, “Annabelle, hav e you ever tried to do an apocalypse ritual?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“No.”

“Martin, have you ever tried to do an apocalypse ritual?”

“Not by choice, but I was involved in one against my will. I managed to stop it before completion.”

“Someone forced you?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Jonah Magnus.”

Silence.

The unknown man said, “Didn’t he live like two centuries ago?”

“Martin,” Colleen said in the tone of someone desperately trying to keep up with events, “is Jonah Magnus alive?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“Most of his body is in the central observation tower of the panopticon of Millbank Prison, underneath London. But his eyes are in the head of the current head of the Magnus Institute, Sasha James.”

A longer silence.

“What the fuck?” the unfamiliar man whispered, while another man Martin didn’t know muttered “I am so fucking confused.”

“I’m sorry,” Colleen said. “Did you say Sasha James… had Jonah Magnus’ eyeballs?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Jonah can take over people’s bodies by replacing their eyes with his. I’m not sure about the details, exactly. But he takes a new body and makes it Institute head. His old persona, Elias Bouchard, was on the run for murder, and I guess he wanted to go out in public again, because he took my friend’s body instead.”

“Is… is the real Sasha… alive, in there?”

“I don’t know for sure. I very much doubt it, though.”

There was, predictably, more silence.

“Well,” Annabelle announced cheerfully. “If you’re satisfied with my answers, Martin, I don’t think I’m really needed here any more.”

“Don’t move!” Colleen ordered, but was apparently ignored. At the first gunshot, Martin hit the floor, and stayed down until everything quieted down again. One of the men swore.

“Is she…?” Martin asked.

“She got away,” Colleen said. “Couple more questions, Martin. Do you intend to try an apocalypse ritual ever again?”

“No.”

“Do you mean us any harm?”

“I mean Jonah Magnus plenty of harm. I’d rather not hurt anyone else, if I can help it.”

“Okay. Put the guns away, guys. We’re safe here.”

“What if he – ?”

“Are you going to shoot a blind man in a church after he just said under magical compulsion that he doesn’t mean you any harm?”

“… Right. Fair enough.”

Guns were holstered. Martin, cautiously, got back up.

“So,” he said, “it seems like the version of events you’ve been told is pretty different to mine. Should I just start at the very beginning?”


	155. Chapter 155

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is brought up to speed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are getting SO CLOSE to the end of this fic you guys. Soon I will be free.

O f course the train fucking broke down.

Daisy was in a hurry and the fucking train broke down.  The doors opened, and everyone poured out onto the platform to await a fucking bus transfer and she did NOT have time for this shit.

“He’s in the church,” a woman told her.

Daisy spun to face her in the crowd. A young black woman, with sharp eyes and a smug grin and… that scar on her head. Threaded with the same silvery-white threads that she’d seen coating Martin’s hand. Daisy put a hand on her knife.

The woman held something out to her. The Dark stone they’d brought with them, that had been switched.

This could be a trap. But one way or another, Martin was in trouble. If it was a trap, she couldn’t help anyway. If it wasn’t, maybe she could.

She took the stone. “The church?”

“Three blocks that way.” The woman pointed and, when Daisy looked, melted into the crowd.

Daisy was just about done with all of this conspiracy bullshit. If anyone had hurt Martin…

She burst through the front door. Four people inside; Martin, that woman she’d hit one time (Caitlyn?), and two men she didn’t know, who immediately pointed guns at her. Martin didn’t seem to be in danger, so she stopped and flashed her empty hands. “Martin, what the fuck?”

“Daisy, I’m… how did you find me?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s the big question here.” Nobody looked inclined to shoot her right that second, so she marched up, grabbed him by the shoulders, and gave him a shake. “I am so fucking… I could just kill you right now.”

He gave her a weak smile. “Well, considering what you’re mad about – ”

“Don’t. Don’t fucking joke about this. What happened to discussing things, huh? What happened to deciding things as a group? Basira and Sasha aren’t around to bully you into opening up so I’m not worth talking to, is that it?”

“D-Daisy, I didn’t mean to – ”

“You went off to fucking kill yourself to ‘save the world’ and left me a fucking note? After years of ‘we work this out together’? They left me behind to protect you, you arsehole!”

“Which is why you would’ve stopped me!”

“Of course I would’ve stopped you! I would’ve taken some time to try to find another fucking solution! And you’re alive right now, so I’m guessing you did find another fucking solution! Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, and this will probably kill us all eventually, but you can’t just… you can’t…” Daisy realised that she was crying. She threw her arms around Martin and hugged him tightly. “You’re so fucking difficult to work with sometimes,” she told him.

Somebody cleared their throat behind her. Oh, right; there were gun-toting strangers in the room.

“Daisy, you’ve met Colleen,” Martin said, disentangling himself from her embrace and gesturing unnecessarily. “And these are her archival assistants, um…?”

“Bryan,” said the taller gun-toting stranger.

“Kyle,” said the shorter one.

“Right. This is Daisy, a friend of mine who really wants Jonah Magnus dead.”

“That’s fair,” Bryan said.

Archival assistants. “You’re the new Archivist, then?” Daisy asked Colleen.

She nodded.

“She can compel the truth already,” Martin pointed out.

“Already? That’s impossible.”

“Apparently not. Technically, we don’t even know if it’s improbable; we only have myself and Jon to go on, so we don’t know the, y’know, range.”

“It’s that freaking book that Miss James keeps making her read,” Kyle said sourly.

“I need that book,” Colleen said immediately.

“What book?” Martin asked. “He never gave me or Jon any book.”

“She’s got this book with all the secrets of the universe in it,” Colleen said casually. “I think. I don’t remember anything specific from it? But it’s important that I read – ”

“Do you know what a Leitner is?” Martin asked.

“Of course! I’ve read a lot of statements.”

“And you’re fine just using one like that?”

“Of course! They can be useful. If used properly.”

Daisy made to exchange a glance with Martin, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “ Okay, but why did he give it to you and not previous assistants?”

“Power,” Martin said. “If it’s making her grow in power this fast… he must be in a hurry. Trying t get her strong and marked up for another attempt.”

“Hang on,” Bryan said. “You said Miss James can see stuff at a distance? So she could be watching us right now?”

“Unlikely,” Martin said. “This church is warded. As soon as you step outside, though, he’ll See again, so whatever plotting you want to do without him, you should do in here where you’re supposed to be confronting me and Annabelle. There are other things that can shield you from him, but he’ll be suspicious if you go seeking them out.”

“Other things?”

“The other powers have some aspects that don’t gel well with the eye. Spiral and Stranger things are hard for him to See, but Dark works best. We thought we were protected with a Dark talisman, but apparently he found us anyway, so I guess not.”

“A spider woman switched out out Dark stone for a fake at some point,” Daisy said. “She just gave the real one back to me. Guess she wanted us found.”

“Because she needed Jonah to send Colleen here to compel her so that I’d believe she wasn’t trying to start an apocalypse,” Martin said, nodding as if everything had fallen into place. (Daisy supposed she’d have to play catch-up on the details later.) “Which means that the stone almost definitely does work, or Annabelle wouldn’t have bothered switching it out. Good to know. More important question: why did Jonah send you here, Colleen?”

“To stop the upcoming Web ritual he told us was happening,” Kyle said, “and kill everyone involved. I suppose he wants you dead.”

Martin shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. You don’t send an Archivist you’ve been lying to on a mission like that. He had to know that Colleen would ask questions first, which means he’s essentially  blown his cover with all three of you and turned another Archivist against him. Why?”  He started pacing, tapping his fingertips together. “It’s a stupid move, and he’s not stupid. Something else is at play here. Why does he want you guys against him?”

“Are we in danger?” Bryan asked.

“We were in danger the moment we took these jobs,” Colleen replied. “But you’re right, this doesn’t make sense… she can’t possibly think I’d go along with the ritual willingly, so why send me here and let you tell me how it works?”

“How many powers have marked you already?” Martin asked.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what counts as being marked. The Spider, definitely, but do the Desolation near the car and the Stranger in the coffee shop count, just by being nearby and kind of scary? That can’t be enough, can it? And then there was that guy who was basically made of disease.”

“You’ve been hurt by a Stranger,” Bryan pointed out. “Didn’t that fake security guard shoot you before Miss James attacked it?”

“Only grazed me with a bullet. It was trying to kill Miss James. I don’t know if a mundane bullet that happened to be fired by a monster counts or not.”

“Wait,” Daisy said. “A fake security guard tried to kill Jonah in the Institute? What did it look like?”

“I don’t know. Just a security guard. Except it wasn’t a person. I was seeing a bit too clearly to make sense of things at the time.”

“And Jonah attacked her? What happened?”

“She attacked it with a mirror, and bits of it peeled away, and it ran out of the building screaming. It was horrifying.”

“Was the monster okay?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it got out of the building and we haven’t been attacked since. If I’d have known that Miss James is apparently an evil body-stealing harbinger of the apocalypse I probably wouldn’t have warned her, though. It could’ve saved us a job.”

“We probably would’ve died,” Kyle pointed out.

“Yeah. True.”

“We’re going to have to put our eyes out before we kill her, aren’t we?” Bryan asked. “Man, that’s gonna make an assassination impossible.”

“You two are bound to the Institute through Colleen,” Martin explained. “When I quit, all my assistants were freed automatically. So if you choose that path, only Colleen would have to blind herself. Personally, I’d recommend finding something less extreme – I didn’t do this until I was literally chanting the apocalyptic invocation. Hopefully you won’t get that far.”

“So that’s a ‘definitely’ on the Web and the Eye,” Daisy said, trying to keep track, “and a maybe on Stranger, Corruption and Desolation. Still a lot of things that haven’t touched you. You’ve got a lot of wiggle room, so that’s good.”

“But why send her here, though?” Martin asked again. “Did Jonah think she’d kill me and you’d Hunt her, maybe? There are plenty of Hunters in London. She’s already been marked by the Web, so he can’t be hoping to get anything out of me or Annabelle defending ours – ” he stopped pacing and snapped his fingers. “Oh!” He pointed at Colleen. “You’re disposable.”

“Okay, rude.”

“To Jonah, I mean. Daisy, you read Jonah’s statement. He believed he had a Spider’s cooperation when he ended up with Jon, already marked, and then me, even more deeply marked. Then I opt out and Colleen shows up, also marked prominently by the Spider and coming to the Institute in a series of events that just scream ‘this was set up for you’. So he’s being given new candidates, but his first two attempts failed; he’s got to wonder. Does he have support, and he’s just failing because it’s a risky venture and some failure is to be expected, or is Annabelle playing her own game?

“So he finds us, because Annabelle has stolen our talisman, and he decides to send Colleen after us to find out whether Annabelle’s on his side. If she is, Colleen walks out of here none the wiser, maybe after being marked up by a Hunter, and almost definitely with me and Daisy dead. If she’s not, either Colleen dies, or is turned against him and he can kill her, which is unfortunate but a reasonable trade for that kind of information. Which leaves us, I suppose, to figure out what conclusions we want him to draw, and give him the right impression when we walk out, while all still managing to believably leave this place alive.”

“If we all walk out of here alive,” Colleen said, “she’s going to know that we know everything. There’s no way she’ll believe I just decided not to compel you.”

D aisy pulled the Dark stone out of her pocket.  The stone didn’t protect against the Archivist’s compulsion, but they didn’t need something to prevent Colleen from hearing the truth. They just needed something that Jonah would believe prevented Colleen from hearing, or at least believing, the truth. And if he thought that Annabelle might be on his side… 

“I might have a plan for taking Jonah down,” she said. “It’s shaky, it’s complicated, and Martin? It’s going to really suck for both of us.”

“Sounds like every single one of our plans so far,” Martin said. “What have you got?”


	156. Chapter 156

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They enact Daisy's plan.

S asha Watched her Archivist emerge from the church.

She’d barely caught Martin and Annabelle entering the church; the foot traffic on the street was too sparse to keep eyes properly on the building,  but they’d definitely been in there when his Archivist entered. He wasn’t sure when Daisy had shown up, but everything seemed to be in hand, now.

As soon as Colleen left the building, he had a pair of strong, well-connected eyes to latch onto once again. The scene was… encouraging. Colleen seemed unhappy, although not half as unhappy as Daisy, exiting the building some distance behind her with her hands empty and carefully held away from her pockets. The reason behind her cooperation soon became clear, when Colleen’s assistants exited with Martin between them, each assistant holding a knife. Daisy kept her yes on Martin, but she didn’t make a move. Sasha wasn’t sure what, specifically, had taken the fight out of Daisy while they were in hiding, but it didn’t look like she’d gotten it back. Not even to save her charge.

Pity for her, Sasha supposed.

“So we just, what, take them back to London?” Bryan asked. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Well we can’t just let them run around out here,” Colleen said. “They know about this Web apocalypse, and they are going to tell us, one way or another. Miss James will have something that can help.” She gave Daisy a smug little smile. Daisy just glared in return, saying nothing.

Could she… could she not speak? Neither Daisy nor Martin had made a sound since leaving the church. Had Annabelle protected Sasha’s secrets by rendering them unable to talk? That was… direct, although it seemed to be working. A smarter Archivist would have bypassed it by giving Daisy a pen and paper, but perhaps Colleen wasn’t very smart. And now Colleen was bringing two captured ex-employees home to her, to see if she had a way to make them talk…

It seemed like Sasha could count on Annabelle after all. Well, probably. It was impossible to be certain with the Web, no matter how much she tested, but this was certainly good evidence. And  Martin and Daisy could be used to help neutralise the others. 

Yes, things were going very well.

\----------------------

  
  


They finished burying the bodies  in an isolated corner of the woods , and Julia threw her shovel angrily down. “I know it’s Jonah’s fault,” she said. “I don’t know how. If he paid off or manipulated that zombie guy or whatever. But it’s his fault that this has happened, I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll find a way to kill him,” Mary vowed. She brushed a hand across her poorly defined cheek. “I was found out through luck, but we can try again. We only have to be lucky once. Jonah has to be lucky every time. He’ll slip up, and we’ll put a bullet through his chest.”

“I think we should try for the eyeball route,” Basira said. “If he’s got a new Archivist and assistants, their lives – ”

“I don’t fucking care,” Julia snapped. “The more we pussyfoot around, the higher the death toll climbs. If it costs a few innocent lives to take him out quick and clean, that’s unfortunate. But if we hesitate and look for a safer way to do things, he’s just going to kill more people in the meantime. Death is the cleanest option.”

“I’ve still got the jar,” Tim shrugged. “Maybe we have to sacrifice the archive staff, maybe we don’t.” He wasn’t going to say so aloud out of the tunnels, but they still had Melanie and Georgie standing by, if the element of surprise was needed. They had assets, they just needed to use them properly.

Tim’s phone beeped. He checked it.

**DaisyChain has sent you a puzzle!**

Daisy? Wasn’t she supposed to be in hiding?

This couldn’t be good.

\--------------------

  
  


Colleen wasn’t certain that this would work. But what other option did they have? What other option did they have, except to try to fool a fucking mind reader? To her face?

Martin and Daisy didn’t seem worried. Martin had explained that it took time and effort for Miss James to read minds, and if they carefully managed her attention, they could probably fool her for long enough to do what they needed to do. Colleen didn’t like the sound of that ‘probably’. She shouldn’t have to deal with this! She’d quit the cafe because of this supernatural nonsense!

No, that wasn’t fair. She’d known what this job entailed when she took it. She hadn’t known the details, like the fact that she’d be working for a mind reader and developing her own Observing powers would be so painful and tiring, but if living through the nightmares from the victim’s side for so long hadn’t put her off then she could hardly pretend that any of that would have. She had only herself to blame for this. If anything, it was Bryan and Kyle who hadn’t asked for this. They didn’t even like reading.

She wished she had her book. All of this would make so much more sense if she were reading. She’d gone without it for a few days, as Miss James had wanted her mind ‘uninjured’ for this journey, whatever that meant. The book didn’t injure her mind; it made things clearer. If she wasn’t quick or practiced enough to handle that clarity yet, that was on her. But she would be, with practice. She could read it when she got back, after this.

Wait. If they got rid of Miss James, would she lose access to it?

Worry about that later. That wasn’t the priority here. At least being kind of panicked and confused would be a useful cover if her mind was read. Miss James would expect her to be a bit scared and confused. The trouble would come if she looked any deeper.

Bryan and Kyle looked nervous, but not too nervous. Bryan had his hand under Martin’s arm, holding a knife to his side in a way that none of the other passenger’s would see it, which was admittedly quite a convoluted piece of play-acting since it was for the benefit of someone who also wouldn’t be able to see it, looking through their eyes, but had to know it was there. Martin, for his part, looked a lot calmer than Colleen thought a hostage should look at knifepoint, but what did she know? Apparently he’d had experienced being kidnapped and she hadn’t. She was pretty sure that Daisy shouldn’t be playing games on her phone though.

But hey, they were going to have to do a lot of train travel that day. She supposed the pair of them couldn’t just sit there looking awkwardly scared the whole time.

She hoped this little ploy worked. Because she didn’t know how long Miss James would allow her to live if it didn’t.

\----------------------

  
  


Sasha Watched her Archivist return with her hostages. They were doing a fairly good job of negotiating the lobby; Bryan had one hand on Martin’s elbow and the other in his pocket and looked as if he were simply guiding his blind friend rather than holding him so he couldn’t run away before Bryan could draw the weapon in his pocket and kill him. Daisy looked defeated, not even attempting to manoeuvre close to Martin; Kyle was carefully keeping between them, so that if she tried anything, Bryan would have plenty of time to kill Martin. Colleen confidently lead the way past the front desk.

It looked like they’d only forgotten one teensy, insignificant little detail, and they didn’t seem to remember it until Rosie saw Daisy, almost screamed, and fled to the back room, already drawing her phone to call emergency services.

Sasha almost laughed at the dawning realisation crossing all of their faces that, oh yeah, Daisy was a wanted serial murderer.

She called Colleen. “I’m watching you on the security cameras,” she lied, “and you should probably bring them up to my office before the police arrive.”

The prisoners were dutifully rushed through Reception and into an elevator, past security guards that didn’t seem to notice anything weird about the Archivist just bringing in two friends who’d caused the desk lady to free the room. Sasha made a mental note to hire better security guards.

This should, at the very least, prove educational. Sasha had no idea whether she’d be able to see into Martin’s mind or not, for one thing. The appropriate thing to do, for people who had managed to quit the service of the Eye, was to leave well enough alone; she certainly hadn’t been so gouche as to send anyone after Eric Delano, and wouldn’t have done so even if Mary getting rid of him hadn’t been a foregone conclusion. People who were out of it, were well out of it.

But this was a bit of a special case. Martin had, after all, cost her her ritual. Cost her the world, at least until she prepared another Archivist. His actions had put her enterprise and her very life in serious danger, so in this case, some trespass was warranted. And she was very interested to see just how much his rejection of the Eye could protect him. Was he merely free, or immune? And Daisy… well. At the very least, having Daisy would keep her safe from Basira. A few less problems to worry about.

Colleen knocked on her door. Hmm; best to get her off the scene as quickly as possible, lest she Know something she shouldn’t.

“Come in, everyone.”

They did. Colleen looked at Sasha. Sasha looked at Colleen.

Before Sasha could get a proper Look, Colleen spoke. “The spider woman did something to them. Can you get them to talk?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha responded automatically.

“Do you think they know anything useful?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“If the Web are readying a ritual – ”

“Colleen, Colleen.” This was getting to be too much. Vetting questions, having to decide whether the compulsion should be resisted, trying to keep on top of things, wasn’t going to leave her enough focus to actually Look at anything. She pulled a key out and unlocked her desk drawer, retrieving the small leather book. “Why don’t you go and read for a little while? I’ll come and find you when we’re done here.”

Colleen’s eyes lit up, and her mind immediately focused. She snatched the book and left.

“Right then. Martin, Daisy; why don’t you sit down?”

Daisy glowered silently at her. Sasha just grinned.

“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m the only thing standing between you and walking out of here in police custody, so I suggest you play nice and perhaps we can help each other out. No? Well, if that’s how you want to play it.” She nodded at Kyle and Bryan, and the prisoners were pushed into seats, knives held within slashing distance of their throats. She’d have to have a look into the assistants’ minds, later, to get a proper idea of what had transpired at the church; it’d be far safer than risking further proximity to her Archivist. But for now…

“Now, then. Martin. My ex-Archivist, who’s been so… inconveniently rash. How’s freedom treating you? Right, right; you can’t speak. Well then.” She sat on the edge of her desk. “Let’s get a good Look at you, shall we?”

A movement. Daisy had grabbed Kyle’s wrist in one smooth movement and slammed it against the back of the chair. He cried out, dropping the knife, and Bryan… instead of killing Martin, like he was supposed to, also dropped his knife in surprise, and the two fled the room. And Sasha, who fifteen seconds ago had had three people on her side to subdue a blind, unresisting Martin and a totally defeated Daisy, was suddenly alone and facing a very angry Daisy leaping right at her.

Even if she’d been prepared for it, Sasha would’ve stood no chance. Daisy threw her to the floor and Martin held down her legs while Daisy pinned her hands under her knees held her head still with one hand in her hair, and raised some kind of… what was that? A strangely shaped paring knife? A sharpened spoon? No, it was some kind of woodworking tool, Sasha had seen her cut wood with it, she kept it in her coat pocket… over her face. Lips drawn in a vicious snarl, she dug the tool into the edge of Sasha’s eye.

Sasha wasn’t an idiot. She had contingencies for if anybody tried this sort of thing. She looked straight into Daisy’s eyes and let said contingencies do their thing.

A stream of pure information, a thousand disjointed and disconnected half-memories from a hundred minds, was projected straight into Daisy’s. She was being eaten alive by insects, she was kissing her brother goodbye and stepping onto a train, she was choosing a school for her children, she was breaking a man’s teeth, she was… Sasha let the information flow by and forced it deep into the softest parts of Daisy’s psyche while the tool dropped from Daisy’s hand and she stared, uncomprehendingly back at her.

“Let me up, Daisy,” Sasha said.

Daisy let her h e ad go, and got off her hands. “Who’s Daisy?” she asked.


	157. Chapter 157

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to escape.

Things were not, in Martin’s opinion, going amazingly well.

Daisy’s weapon hit the carpet with a dull thud, and Jonah sat up. “Now, Martin – where were we?”  Jonah went to shake him off.

Martin reached out with his right hand, the hand that still moved under his own power, grabbed a handful of hair, and slammed Jonah’s head against the desk behind him as hard as he could. He’d been aiming for the edge of the desk, but it seemed he’d hit the flat side. Didn’t matter; Jonah went limp, and Martin grabbed for Daisy, found a handful of jacket, and pulled her out into the hallway.

Martin had walked this corridor a hundred times before, but usually with eyeballs. “Daisy,” he said, readjusting his grip so his left hand encircled her wrist , “we need to get to the elevator.”

The sense of their relationship that Martin got through their touch was… confused. A sense of a moderately long, comfortable history, but the details were chaotic, shifting.

“Alan, the elevator’s been broken all week,” she said disdainfully. “You know that.”

That response probably indicated nothing good, but there was no time to unpack it now. He could hear Jonah getting up, and there would be security guards, police…

“No, they fixed it this morning,” he said. “Why don’t you go and look?”

“Ugh, if you insist.” She marched off down the corridor, towing him along, and slammed the call button with rather more force than Martin felt strictly necessary. She started with surprise when the doors actually opened. “Martin?”

“Yes, Daisy?”

“Where are we going?”

“The archives. We’re in a hurry.”

They rushed into the elevator, which started to rise.

“Why are we going up?” Martin asked.

“The museum archives are on the third floor. Oh, you’re going to love the butterflies – ”

“The Magnus Institute, Daisy; we’re in the Magnus Institute.” Martin found the button himself, while the elevator stopped, the doors opened and closed, and then they started to descend. He tried not to sound impatient; this waste of time could be fatal, but there was nothing to be done about it. “Do you know where the Magnus Institute archives are?”

“Oh, you don’t want to see anything they have. Kitschy ghost nonsense.”

Martin wondered briefly whether Basira would kill him for letting this happen to Daisy. Well, they’d have to survive Jonah before they needed to worry about that. “Okay, but do you know where they are?”

“Of course,” Daisy said in a completely different tone of voice, “I’ve barely been outside the damn basement in two weeks. Gertrude’s a real slave driver when she gets in one of her moods.”

The doors opened again and Daisy practically dragged him out of the elevator. “it’s just down this way if you want to make a statement. I don’t know if she’s in right now, but I’ll get you one of the forms.”

“Thank you.”

In the doorway to the archives, Daisy stopped again. “We can’t be in here! We don’t have clearance!”

Martin bit down on his impatience and pulled her through the room, trying not to crack his shins on anything too painfully. He had a cane for this kind of thing… where had that ended up? Left on the train? In the church? In the safehouse? He must have had it when he left the safehouse; he wouldn’t have tried to navigate the train station without it. But he’d spent most of the day being led around by various ‘captors’, and must have lost track of it somewhere.

God forbid he remember the part where, oh yeah, he was going to have to get back out of the Magnus Institute building.

“We can’t go into the office!” Daisy hissed, in a way far too timid to be anything Daisy would say.

“Yeah we can,” he said. “Gertrude needs something.”

“Who’s Gertrude?”

Martin gave up trying to keep track. “Daisy. Focus. Your name is Alice Tonner. You are standing in the archives of the Magnus Institute. We have to get into the tunnels. Do you understand?”

“I’ve told you before, you can’t play in the tunnel! A train will hit you.”

“The tunnels under London, Daisy. Do you remember the tunnels under London?”

“Oh! Come on. There’s a trapdoor in Jon’s office.”

Good enough.

They rushed into the office. Martin went for the trapdoor, but the desk had apparently been moved to cover it. With a grunt of effort, Daisy got to simply pushing the old, heavy thing across the floor and Colleen yelped in surprise from behind it.

Martin had forgotten about her.

“Colleen? You – ”

“Shh, I’m reading.”

Martin considered trying to grab the book and destroy it, but Daisy was already  pulling him down the stairs behind her. She pulled the trapdoor closed, and froze.

“It’s dark,” she whispered with un-Daisy-like fear.

Great, more of this. Martin squeezed her hand reassuringly. For his part, he felt a lot safer in the tunnels; not only because Jonah couldn’t see them, but because  he’d navigated this particular hallway blind dozens of times. He used to take this route to work from Mary’s apartment building, and often didn’t bother to bring a light. And he knew the general area that Tim liked to set up his home in the tunnels, so the others shouldn’t be too hard to find.

“It’s okay,” Martin told her. “You’re safe with me.” _Whoever you are, right now_. He raised his hand to guard against walking directly into any inconvenient walls the tunnel might have decided to put in his way since he was last here, and started leading Daisy home.

\---------------------

  
  


M ary was on high alert for anything unusual in the tunnels. Since that man had gotten Trevor, she’d appointed herself the first line of defense, since she was immune to about half of the more horrifying fates that an avatar of fear could inflict upon her friends. Basira had pointed out that she also seemed more vulnerable to some things, since Jonah’s mirror hadn’t melted the faces of anyone else in the room during her attack, and it quite probably all evened out, but she felt it much more likely that anything else sent to attack them in the tunnels would be geared to kill humans, rather than Stranger manifestations.

Besides, Daisy had taught her some basic fighting skills years ago and she’d stopped wanting to learn after hitting Melanie too hard and putting her in hospital that one time. But it was becoming clear that she might need to fight again in the future. So if anyone came for her friends in the tunnels again, well, they would be practice.

So when she heard footsteps approaching that were not the footsteps of Basira, Tim and Julia that she’d become accustomed to, she picked up her torch and went to investigate. She relaxed at the sight of Martin and Daisy walking down the tunnel. “You’re okay!” she squealed, and threw her arms around Martin, who flinched. “But you don’t look happy. You couldn’t get the eyes?”

“What eyes?” Daisy asked.

“Jonah did something to her,” Martin explained. “When she went for his eyes. Some kind of… memory bomb, or something, I think. She keeps thinking she’s different people and in different places.”

“She took her memories of herself away?”

“I don’t think so. When he gave Melanie memories, he told her he can’t take them away. I think he just overloaded her brain with a bunch more.”

“Oh. That’s easy, then. If all of her is still in there, we just need to help her remember what parts are her and what parts aren’t.” She let Martin go and took Daisy’s hands. “Daisy. I’m Mary. We’re friends, okay?”

Daisy nodded, apparently happy to accept this on faith, but without any real recognition in her eyes. “Why do you look like that?”

“Because the person who hurt you, also hurt me. We both need to rebuild ourselves. But it’s okay, because we can help each other. I can help you and you can help me. Okay?”

Daisy glanced at Martin, then looked back to Mary. She nodded. “Okay.”

“Great! You need Basira. Basira can help you the most; come on. Oh, she is going to be so unhappy about this.”

“I don’t think any of us are exactly thrilled about it,” Martin said drily. “Even if Daisy recovers, that’s one hell of a defense system. How are we supposed to get those eyes out if this is going to happen every time we try?”

“Knock Sasha unconscious first?”

“We keep failing even without that stipulation. And it’s only going to be harder to get close now.”

“We’ll manage it,” Mary declared. “We’ve done so many amazing things already! What’s one more?” She marched off down the corridor, friends in tow.

Everyone was home again. That was what mattered.

And Mary wasn’t going to lose any more friends, no matter what.

\---------------------

  
  


Sasha let the doctor finish looking her over, but waved away his recommendation that she go to hospital.

“Blows to the head can be quite serious,” he insisted.

“Really, it’s fine. I feel fine. Thank you.”

She probably deserved this. Yes, it was the fault of those cowardly archive assistants, running from helpless prisoners and leaving her alone like that, but she was the one who’d put herself in that position in the first place. She should have had proper guards in there, and had the pair in handcuffs. She should’ve not been in the room with them at all.

T hat was it, then. Until this danger had passed, no more mistakes, no more unnecessary risks. Sasha’s office had its own little en suite bathroom, one of the perks of being in charge of the same building for two hundred years and getting to make the updating and renovation decisions, so with the addition of some food, clothing and simple appliances, she could draw the curtains, lock the door, and not have to be in any danger ever again. She could move almost all of her meetings to emails instead, and only allow in people who she could trust absolutely, and…

Was this paranoia? Maybe. But they were out to get her. Making this line of thought reasonable, right? This was surely reasonable?

Maybe that blow to the head had done something. Huh. Well, whether she was in a proper frame of mind or not, the blow had demonstrated that she was right; she needed to take better care of her personal safety. She had already stopped leaving the Institute weeks ago; now she’d just move everything into her office, and Watch everything very carefully all of the time, and wait until she’d managed to get rid of all of her attackers, and then she’d be free to try the ritual again. Yeah. This was all going to be fine.

Absolutely everything was going to be fine.

\-----------------------------

  
  


Martin sat in the tunnel, and thought.

Melanie and Georgie were with the People’s Church, safe for now, ready to act if needed but there wasn’t a whole lot that they could do. Trevor was dead, Julia was alive but grieving, Tim and Basira were fine, but Daisy and Mary were injured in ways he didn’t really understand.  The new archive staff were in danger the moment Jonah thought to have a good look inside their heads, but safe enough if that didn’t happen… still, they couldn’t help much while they were feigning ignorance. They just put them on a clock.

No, that wasn’t fair. They were already on a clock. The longer they waited, the more they could be picked off, like Trevor. But every failed attack put them in danger, too, like with Daisy and Mary.

Both of Jonah’s bodies, his original one and his stolen one, were out of reach, locked away in the Panopticon and the Institute, respectively. Killing either put the archive staff, and quite possibly the entire Institute (they’d never settled that little question), at risk, and introduced other problems that nobody really seemed to be thinking about – the Library, that Jonah had mentioned in his statement. If Jonah was gone, either dead or in a jar on Tim’s wall, and the Library… got out, or whatever?…  was that going to cause problems? Nobody except Jonah seemed to know anything about it. Maybe it would be a good thing. Or a bad thing. It wasn’t something that Martin wanted to much around with, if he could help it.

H e rubbed at his web-covered hand. His own webs, Annabelle had said, turned in on himself. They’d reached his shoulder now. 

One of the many little tunnel spiders crawled onto his hand, and he understood what it was to him, and why it was there.

_Oh, Annabelle. This_ _i_ _s a bit more than ‘_ _providing me with some useful tools’, don’t you think_ ?

But it would work. If he were careful. If they removed all the points of failure, if they predicted correctly… Melanie and Georgie could get what they needed from Manuela, and if everyone used their skills…

Yes.  They just might be able to save the world for good.


	158. Chapter 158

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan is enacted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We got a two-part finale and then an epilogue and then we're done, guys! It's been a busy three months but we're here!

“I can’t believe this,” Basira said, rolling her eyes. “After everything, Martin, you’ve still managed to find a way to sacrifice yourself.” The whole tunnel crew had gathered to hear the plan, and she was recording the conversation to email to Melanie and Georgie when she had internet access.

“At least he’s sharing with the group first,” Mary pointed out.

“It’s not as dramatic as all that,” Martin said. His hand was pressed to the wall, and everyone tried to ignore how the cobwebs on his skin seemed to match up with the ones in the tunnel, like they’d become part of the same web. That was probably fine. Yeah. Probably fine.

“It’s pretty fucking dramatic,” Tim said. “The question is, will it work? Because so far as I can see, ninety per cent of this plan is based on convoluted bullshit.”

“Oh yeah, it’s a lot of top grade convoluted bullshit,” Martin agreed. “But it doesn’t have to be accurate, it just has to be something Jonah will believe and use to act in the way we want. The only bit that needs to be real is the ‘killing blow’, so to speak.”

“And will that part work?” Tim asked.

“Yes,” Basira said. “I… think. I’ve been trying to research these fears for years and the information isn’t always consistent, but I’m very confident that this _should_ work.”

“I’m sure it’ll work,” Julia said, “because I hate that we live in a world where this kind of thing is possible. So of course it’s going to be possible.”

“I accidentally created a Desolation messiah who tried to kill all my friends once,” Tim said. “Anything’s possible.”

“And then I killed her with the power of love!” Mary chirped brightly through twisted, plasticky lips. Julia edged away.

“Mary, you know about this fear shit,” Tim said. “Do you think it’s possible?”

“I don’t know anything about ‘web’ fear in particular,” she said. “But Sasha is very powerful. And Martin is clever. If you can twist her fear, Martin, then I am certain it will work.”

“Can you hold it together long enough to do your part, Daisy?” Basira asked. Daisy frowned at her, confused. “I’m Basira,” she reminded her gently. “Do you remember the plan?”

“Oh! Yes. I can do it.”

“Then it’s just about your friends convincing the People’s Church to help,” Julia said. “You guys must be running low on resources to trade with them.”

“Oh, Melanie and Georgie can just lie to them,” Martin shrugged. “The Church would love to see the Institute fall, and all we need them to do is ward a few boxes and cast a bit of glass.”

“They’ll never forgive us if we deceive them,” Basira said. “We’ll be burning that bridge forever.”

“Even if we did this without their help, we’d be burning that bridge forever,” Martin pointed out. “Any alliance with them was always going to be temporary.”

“Also, they kidnapped Martin,” Mary said angrily.

“So,” Tim said. “We’re doing this? Assuming Melanie and Georgie agree?”

Everyone nodded. They were doing this.

For better or worse, soon, everything would be over.

\---------------------------

  
  


Sasha paced back and forth in her office. Should she have moved to a room with smaller windows? No; the glass was bulletproof, ever since that unpleasantness with Michael Crew, and nobody could see anything through the metal security roller or the heavy blinds.

It was almost midnight. Nobody was in the building but her, security, and a handful of janitors. But she could See them moving about outside , planning some big play, no doubt. Trevor  and Julia on the front door, hidden from view, but it was simple enough to spot them by simply looking out of their eyes. Melanie and Georgie blocking the other exits… if Sasha was going to make a run for it, it would have to be now, out of one of the unblocked side doors and… 

What? Let them hunt her through the streets like an animal? No; she could call the police to deal with this. She picked up the phone.

There were Basira and Daisy, coming up out of the trapdoor in the archives. Daisy didn’t look entirely stable, as expected, but she seemed capable enough, with Basira’s constant direction. Sasha had hoped that that little memory attack would do permanent damage, when she’d designed it, but perhaps not. She’d have time to refine it later, after dealing with all of these people.

Basira and Daisy were pulling up boxes, assisted by somebody still underground. That would have to be Mary, if she was strong enough to lift the boxes of… of something that Sasha couldn’t See. Ah; the boxes had been warded, somehow, with the Dark.

But then Basira opened one to check something and lifted something partway out of the box and Sasha’s heart skipped a beat, because that was plastic explosive. How these people took after Gertrude – when in doubt, blow it up.

So  _this_ was the game, then. Just… just blow up the Institute? Really? There’s no way they had enough plastic explosive to do that! But… would it take that much? The building was old. And Daisy was an expert at this sort of thing. And they were pulling a lot out. 

Sasha supposed that she was expected to either cower in her office and die, or run out the front door and die, or sneak past Daisy and Basira and go down the trapdoor, where Mary would be waiting, and die. She called the police to report Tim Stoker, serial murderer watching the Institute, called the security to deal with Daisy and Basira as Daisy started wiring explosives in the archives, and crept out of her office. Because what these fools had apparently forgotten, was that while the  trapdoor in the archives was the only proper entrance to the tunnels in the Institute, there were places in the basement level where the Institute rooms were separated from the tunnels only by a bit of thin plasterboard.

Leaving Daisy and Basira to deal with being detained by security (or attempting to shoot their way through security, if they preferred; it made no difference to Sasha), she used the stairs to sneak down instead to Artefact Storage.

There was a bit of a thrill to all of this sneaking about, Sasha decided. The last time she’d had to infiltrate her own building, Seeing ahead to avoid running into people and using the secret keys and security weaknesses she’d created or discovered over the past two hundred years, had been when she was putting googly eyes on everything. Ah, that had been a fun few weeks. Artefact Storage had become so paranoid over somebody sneaking in… a quarter of the staff had voluntarily downloaded programs so everyone else could track their movements and clear their name… Sasha missed the good old days.

She locked the door securely behind her, grabbed the perfectly normal fire axe that she’d falsely filed as an artefact in this room for this very purpose, and headed over to the right part of the wall. A few whacks, and she had a Sasha-sized hole. She pushed her way trough, into the tunnel.

To the left, the tunnel looped around to the trapdoor tunnel, or at least it had the last time  Sasha had been down there. To the right, it spiralled further into the network; somewhere down there was the library and the Panopticon and hundreds of little tunnels that Sasha couldn’t See in and would never get a chance to explore. And also, various exits all around London, where she could safely emerge far away from any Hunters or Strangers and she could Watch from afar while the police cleared up the mess being made of her Institute. 

Sasha went that way.

\-----------------------

  
  


Staying very quiet and very still, Mary watched Sasha turn and walk down the tunnel. Then she raced back to the trapdoor and sprang up into the archives. “She’s on the way,” she told Basira. “I’ll call the others and tell them to get out of here.”

Basira nodded. “Come on, Daisy, back underground before security gets through that door,” she said, nodding to the barred door of the archives.

“I’ll put the kettle on while you let them in,” Daisy said.

“No, no; into the tunnels. Come on.”

\------------------------

  
  


As she headed away from the Institute, Sasha let herself relax. Normally these tunnels would be unsafe, but she had verified, with difficulty, that Trevor Herbert was dead, and she knew the location of everyone else except Martin. And so far as being hunted through the tunnels, Martin wasn’t something to worry about. Although she would feel better, knowing where he was. Just in case.

She got her wish. The tunnel bend, and just there, around the corner, was Martin. He was walking away from her at a calm, steady pace, with a long knife in  his right hand. Her torchlight gleamed off something silvery wrapped around his left arm and half his head; cobwebs. She was certain she hadn’t made a sound, but still he stopped, turned, and smiled at her. 

“Ah,” he said. “Looks like you found me.” He didn’t sound surprised or worried by this.

Sasha tried to Look at him, and got… nothing. Hmm. Perhaps quitting had rendered him immune to her powers; that was… wait. There was something wrong with his eyes. They were glass, obviously, but they weren’t the realistic glass eyes that one would expect.

They were glass orbs, with little black stones set where the pupils should be. Those light-drinking stones of Darkness that shielded people from her Sight.

Yeah. That would probably do it.

Apparently not bothered by Sasha’s presence, Martin turned and kept walking down the tunnel. Sasha followed. “Where are you going?”

“To the Panopticon.”

“You won’t be able to find it.”

“If you say so.” He kept walking.

Sasha followed. “What do you want with the Panopticon?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He waved the knife in his hand. “I’m going to kill you. And you’ll either stop me, or you won’t. It’s your choice, Jonah. I know how much you prize making your own choices.”

“I could stop you right now.”

“And that would be your choice.”

Sasha put a hand on the gun she’d taken to carrying about. Something was happening here, and she didn’t have all the pieces of it.

This  ad to be a distraction.  Nobody could find the Panopticon except Sasha; if he planned to go there and kill her first body, he’d be wandering these tunnels until he starved. But he knew that, and he knew that she knew that, so why…?

They’d reached a fork in the tunnel. Martin hesitated. He put his free hand on the wall and seemed to concentrate for almost a full minute, then turned left.

The correct way to the Panopticon.

One hand on her gun, Sasha watched him make two more correct turns before asking. “How are you doing that?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Why shouldn’t you? If one of us is going to die tonight anyway.”

“Good point, I suppose. I’m following the map.”

“You can’t possibly have a – ” Sasha stopped as her phone light once again caught his arm at the right angle to show up the spiderwebs. He pressed his web-covered hand to the wall once more, touching them to the old cobwebs there that were as much an expected feature of the tunnels as the stone itself.

Sasha moved the light up, to look at the tunnel roof, crisscrossed with strands upon strands of cobwebs, full of tiny spiders.

From her slight gasp of surprise, Martin must have realised what she was looking at. “They hitched a ride down with me years ago, shortly after the Web marked me,” he explained. “There were so many spiders already down here, even I didn’t notice. I didn’t understand what they were, back then, but I suppose we all start laying our pieces early. I suspect I may have had help, as coy as Annabelle is to admit it. Hard to be certain, with the Web, but I suppose it doesn’t matter any more who did what.”

“They still shouldn’t be able to find the Panopticon. Not reliably enough to map it.”

“They couldn’t. Until you showed them the way.”

“I what?”

“Let’s play fair with information, Jonah. I think it’s your turn to tell me something, don’t you?” He didn’t slow his steady pace, but his voice became strained as he asked. “Is the original Sasha still alive in there?”

“No. If Daisy had’ve succeeded in taking my eyes out, you would have been left only with a corpse. Now, this map?”

“You called me to the Panopticon to mark me with the Lonely. All I had to do was mark the way.” He trailed his fingers along the wall, breaking a few old cobwebs, to demonstrate. “The tunnels have moved since then, of course, but while that might confuse a trail of teeth, spiders are living things. All they have had to do is work fast enough to keep up with the changes. My turn. Will Daisy recover from what you did to her?”

“I don’t know. She seems more stable than I would have expected, so I think she will, if she works at it. I had rather hoped to break something important with that trick, but the human mind is remarkably resilient. Why do you want to kill me?”

“Who says I want to kill you?”

“Come now, Martin.”

“From the disbelief in your voice, I’m sure you already know why I want to kill you. Like you haven’t ruined the lives of everyone I know, gotten Jon killed and Sasha, tried to destroy the world – ”

“Let me rephrase the question. Why are you going to kill me, in the Panopticon?”

“That’s really up to you, isn’t it? If I kill you, it’ll be because you decided not to stop me. And you’re running out of time to make up your mind. We’re here.”

They turned one final corner, and before them lay the enormous cavern that contained the Panopticon.


	159. Chapter 159

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end.

“Stop walking or I’ll shoot,” Sasha said.

Martin stopped. “Oh. You brought a gun?” He sounded surprised.

“How did you expect me to stop you?”

“I just assumed you’d use your mind powers. You seem to like them.”

“You’ve shielded yourself.”

“What, with these?” He tapped his eye. “These stones stopped Sasha from tracking phones and stopped me from Knowing things, but they never stopped me from compelling. You can’t See into my mind, but I’m sure you could influence it just fine. But by all means, use the gun. That would be far better for the world, actually. A way out.” He flashed the knife. “I can’t use this on myself, so if you’d be so kind…”

What the hell was going on? He wanted to be shot? Would a bullet even kill him?

“Would a bullet even kill you?” Sasha asked.

“I’m not sure. Best for the world if it does. I don’t think you’ll shoot me, though. And I don’t think you’ll let me kill you, either. You’re too greedy for that, aren’t you? You’re the sort of man who’s perfectly happy to break the world for power.” Martin turned and started walking, slowly, toward the tower. Sasha raised the gun again, but didn’t fire, not yet. She had until he got to the top to figure out what the hell was going on.

He’d been evasive about wanting to kill her, and said he couldn’t use the knife on himself. Martin wasn’t here of his own free will. He wanted her to stop him, but not with mind powers, because… well. There was only one reason a person so willing to die would want to be sure they weren’t first attacked with Sasha’s mind powers. He’d escaped the Eye, and didn’t want to be marked again. Because he didn’t want to succeed at this mission he was being forced on.

“You’re here to take over the Panopticon,” Sasha said.

“What?” The sheer confusion in Martin’s voice made it obvious that she was wrong. But what else could it be? He was still marked by every other damn entity – oh. Oh.

“You’re here to perform my ritual as a Web ritual. You’re here to end the world, and give primacy to the Web.”

“And he catches up. Pity. I was hoping you’d shoot me before you figured it out.”

“I still might.”

“No you won’t.” Martin stopped walking again, and turned to face her. “You won’t pass up this opportunity. I know you wanted to be king of a ruined world, but I’m certain you’ll settle for being the favoured duke of one, sitting here in your Panopticon and watching the misery of your fellow man. Because if you let me go, I will have no choice but to kill you, and go pick a fight with some other servant of the Beholding instead. And if you shoot me, eliminate me as a piece on the board forever, you’ll find yourself engaged in a race with servants of the Web to prepare another ritual the fastest, and you know you stand very little chance of beating them. My friends are up there about to destroy your Institute, they’re still after your life, and the Web is oh so good at these long, elaborate games. So no, Jonah. You’re not going to shoot me. You’re going to take your consolation prize rather than risk losing everything. You’re going to do what you tried to do last time, and force me to break the world for you. Aren’t you?”

Sasha lowered the gun. “Yes, Martin. I suppose that I am. Although I don’t believe that this will work. You’re not the Archivist.”

Martin laughed. “Oh, I hope you’re right. I hope this fails and makes fools of all of you. But I don’t think it will. Why do you think we had to come here, to the place you’ve bound up so tightly to the Library?”

Yes, that made sense. The Library was vital, and so the Panopticon was vital. Perhaps the world would belong to the Web, but Sasha at least would still be more powerful than any of the other powers. Her Panopticon waould be the lynchpin of the whole ritual, after all.

So it seemed that the Web wasn’t betraying her, after all. It wasn’t the full domination she  h ad planned for, but it was  an  acceptable  compromise . Now, what did he have that could be used against Martin? Nothing recent. There was no way to pull anything from his mind, behind those Dark false eyes. But some  things hurt no matter how much time had passed, and she did have something prepared, from a long time ago.

“Do you want to know why your mother died hating you, Martin?” Sasha asked, forcing the relevant memories into his mind. And from the way he openly wept, it was clear that yes, she could still influence his mind.

G ood to know.

Martin had fallen to his knees under the assault. His knife lay on the ground in front of him, forgotten. He wiped at his tears with his web-free hand and got, shakily, to his feet.

“Off you go, then,” Sasha said, trying not to sound too smug.

He turned and walked toward the observation tower, but he didn’t ascend the stairs. The base of the tower was made of steel beams set in concrete with bricks around the outside, but Martin pressed his hands to the bricks and they simply… gave way. Fascinated, Sasha shone her light into the hollow in the concrete – somehow, spiders (it had to have been spiders, right?) had hollowed out a space easily large enough for a person. They must have started work as soon as Martin had marked the path here, because there was no way that spiders could perform this kind of work particularly quickly. She shone her light up, to see how high the space went, and the beam was lost in a mass of webs; it could quite possibly have stretched the full height of the tower. The webs that lines the space were… orderly, somehow. Their branching designs looked less like normal cobwebs and more like organic computer circuits.

M artin  took out his Dark glass eyes and spread his arms wide, and spiders crawled down from the walls of the space to thread the network of webs around his hands, then down his arms, slowly imprisoning him in a crisscrossing cocoon of spiderweb. Sasha watched, fascinated, but wasn’t able to see the whole process; even as she watched, spider s dragged pieces of fallen brick back into the wall with far more strength than she would have expected, cementing them in place with more web, until from the outside, the base of the tower looked as solid and undisturbed at it always had. 

A pity. Sasha would have liked to watch, or at least Watch, whatever was happening in there, to wire Martin into the Library and force him to perform the ritual. Instead, she supposed that there was nothing to do but wait  for the world to change. 

The first sign that something was wrong was the lancing pain that shot through the back of her eyes.

The second was when her leg spasmed suddenly, nearly dropping her to the floor.

Sasha had been in this game long enough to know the difference between a problem with her own body and an assault on it. Something was attacking, her, trying to…

She glanced at the tower, remembering that she hadn’t been able to see just how high up the spider cavern in there went.

She looked at the guard room at the very top of the tower.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Sasha charged up the stairs and burst into the room to see spiders crawling all over her first body, tying the withered wrists and ancient ankles down with layers of web, cascading over the shoulders and down the arms and in the mouth but mostly, mostly pouring into the eye sockets, building little white orbs where Jonah Magnus’ eyes should be and connecting them to a complicated network of webbing on the floor. She darted forward to destroy the webbing, but her whole body seized up and she could do nothing but watch as they completed their work.

Sasha had been played. Martin wasn’t here to bring about any apocalypse. He was, after all, here to get marked by the Eye, to use the Panopticon.

Just not directly. He was using the Panopticon to use her. And she’d let him. She’d marked him up and stood back and watched while he invaded her observation tower.

Outside her control, Sasha’s body spun on her heel and walked back down the tower, out of the prison,  and back through the tunnels, to the Magnus Institute. She climbed through the hole in the wall in Artefact Storage and then, suddenly, she was released, and in control once more.

Out of curiosity, she tried to go back into the tunnels, and found that when she did so, she was firmly turned around, walked back out, and released again. Which was about what she had expected.

Her Institute was intact. None of Martin’s allies were anywhere to be seen. She went to talk with the police, and found they’d called a bomb squad because of the plastic explosives, which had turned out to be fake. Part of Martin’s little ploy to drive her underground and make her believe she’d lose the Institute, so she’d be more likely to mark him under the belief he was there to end the world. She gave her statement to police, pretending to have been hiding in the tunnels all night.

Then she went to bed. What else could she have done?

\--------------------------

  
  


Sasha opened her eyes at nearly midday and fervently wished, for the first time in a long time, that she wasn’t gifted with such clarity, and could just pretend that last night had been a dream. But she’d gotten out of the habit of self-delusion a long time ago. She got up, went through her normal morning routine without any interference from the Web avatar who hated her guts and was apparently in control now, and got to work.

It wasn’t until she started writing up a report that anything unusual happened. Her hands seized up, and her fingers started typing.

**Hello, Jonah.**

“Annabelle, I presume,” Sasha said testily.

**No. Just Me.**

“Martin. So what happens now?”

**Very little, probably. I thought we should discuss terms, and make sure we’re on the same page. I’m sure you don’t want any unnecessary conflict any more than I do.**

“Terms,” Sasha said cautiously.

**Yes.**

“I suppose you want me to shut down the Institute, renounce the Eye, and commit myself to a life of good works?”

**How you run your Institute isn’t any of my business. You will of course find a way to clear the names of my friends with the police, you will stop allowing Colleen to read that book. It isn’t good fro her. But other than that, I have no intention to get involved. I have two major demands of you, and if you fulfil them, you’ll barely even notice I’m here.**

“I’m listening,” Sasha said cautiously.

**You will, of course, stop trying to start an apocalypse. You have power and immortality here. You don’t need to destroy the world for it. I will put a stop to any attempts to organise such a ritual immediately.**

Sasha had expected that. “And your other demand?”

**From now on, the primary purpose of this Institute is making sure that nobody else attempts a ritual that may succeed. Do what you like so far as serving the Beholding and growing your archives, but you will also keep an eye out for other ritual attempts, and be ready to stop them if they arise.**

The last few Archivists had been invested in doing that anyway. Sasha supposed that the only real change was focusing on rituals that might actually succeed, and given that nobody but her had figured out the method in two hundred years, it was very unlikely to come up. “That’s all?” she asked.

**That’s all. Behave like a reasonable person and don’t try to end the world and you won’t even notice me.**

Sasha hesitated. There was one more obvious thing, that he may have forgotten. She didn’t want to remind him, but it was going to come up eventually, so it was better to resolve it now, while she had time to prepare to fight him, if need be.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me not to take new bodies, too.”

Martin took a long time to reply.

**I hate what you do, and I won’t pretend otherwise. It disgusts me that we’re having this conversation through the corpse of my friend. Sasha deserved better than this, and I didn’t know them, but I’m sure Elias and James and all the others deserved better than this, too.**

**But I know that you’d view that kind of ultimatum as a death sentence, and while I’m sure you’ll spend our time together looking for ways to kill me no matter what, I’d rather not force that kind of desperate fight. I’d prefer to have you alive and using your powers to protect this world. We will talk about the source of your victims, when the time comes, because there will be no more snatching innocent employees. But there are people out there that the world is better without.**

**I’m not going to kill you, Jonah, not even through the slow progress of age. You’re too important to the defense of the world.**

Sasha relaxed a little. She could work with this. Temporarily. Until she found a way to break Martin’s control and go and drag him out of that tower and kill him, and get back to creating her world under the dominion of the Eye… but if she wasn’t on a time limit, then she could take her time. She could play along, for now. For years, decades, even centuries, if need be. Until an opportunity arose.

“You can’t protect the world forever, you know,” she said. “It will collapse eventually. And when I bring about the apocalypse, you’re going to regret giving up the chance to enact the ritual yourself and spare yourself the fate of most of humanity.”

**Yes. I can’t protect the world forever. In a century or two or three, perhaps, you will die, or you will find a way to kill me, or this delicate system of magical devices and rituals we’re both tangled in will break, or somebody will be quick enough to bring about the apocalypse before the Institute can stop them. Nothing is forever. The Tower will collapse, eventually.**

**But that is in the future, and this is today. And today, people are happy, and safe, and they have you to keep them that way. Today, and tomorrow, and for as many days as we have left… today, we keep building.**


	160. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One year later.

**One year later**

It was a slow day at the PI firm, so Basira worked on a class assignment. She’d failed several classes with that whole ‘on the run for murder’ thing last year and had to repeat them, and now it felt like everything she did was a semester behind. Which she supposed it was, but there was no reason that mattered, really.

Daisy, in Reception, was on the phone. Basira heard the phrase “we were acquitted of all charges,” meaning she was probably talking to a new client worried about the whole serial murderer thing. Basira waited for the call to end before sauntering into Reception and kissing her.

“What’s the case?” she asked.

“Someone whose brother is someone else now but nobody believes it’s a different person.”

“Ugh, that thing _again_? We really need to find out how exactly Dekker bound it the first time.”

Daisy nodded. “Jun has occult contacts. I’ll ask him if he knows anything.”

“Who’s Jun, Daisy?”

“You know, my old boyfriend from when I lived in Tokyo.” Daisy paused and squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ve never lived in Tokyo, have I?”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Okay. Okay, everything that happened in Tokyo is a lie. I’ll try to remember.” She looked at the two main things on her desk, aside from the computer – a large picture of her and her friends all smiling together, and a mirror. “Right. By the way, the guy from the Hillard case took our advice and went to make a statement, so we’ll have a smoother version of events from the Institute to look through tomorrow. And we’ll know whether it’s actually supernatural.”

“Always handy. Anything else that needs to be done today?”

“I don’t think so, why?”

“Because if we get out of here early, we’ll have time to make beetroot dip for the house party.”

“Yes! The house party is real. Okay.”

“Tim and Julia are in town right now, so they’ll probably bring that casserole thing that Tim likes to make. They’ll be late, though. They’re here to do something really important, apparently.”

“I bet it’s to kill some fire monster with six heads or something.”

“Ha. Probably.”

\------------------------

  
  


The ground had been undisturbed for more than a year, and in that time, the grass and leaf litter of the forest had reclaimed it. If you didn’t know, it would be impossible to tell that you were standing over a grave. 

Tim poured a bottle of alcohol out onto the ground while Julia laid down the bouquet of flowers and shiny new hunting knife.

“Happy birthday, old man,” she whispered.

They stood over the unmarked grave of Trevor Herbert for a while.

“He died protecting us,” Julia said after a little while. “It was about the best death one of us can hope for.”

“It’ll take us too, you know,” Tim said.

“It takes everyone.”

“And you’re okay with that? Hunting, knowing that eventually we’re going to be something’s prey?”

Julia frowned at him. “What’s with the philosophy all of a sudden? Everyone is hunter and prey. It’s how the world works. Turning our backs on it and sitting in an office somewhere wouldn’t protect us or anyone else.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You’re thinking of taking Daisy’s route? Plugging your ears and pretending you can’t hear the Blood and growing weak while you play pretend?” Out of respect for Tim and Daisy, she was clearly trying to keep the derision out of her voice. She was failing.

Tim looked at the grave again. That was their two choices, wasn’t it? The two ‘good’ endings for people like them. The fates of their two mentors. Turn your back on everything and slowly wither away, afraid of what you are, or get killed by something before your sins catch up with you and you become as bad as that which you hunt. The other option, continuing to live and chase and kill until… well. It didn’t bear thinking about.

But that was a long, long way in the future. For now, the sun was bright, the wind was cold, their minds were clear, and the world was full of things that very definitely needed to die.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Ask me again next year.”

\-------------------------

  
  


Melanie was  taking a break from the vegetable garden and scritching the Admiral’s fuzzy little chin when Georgie swept into the room, lifted her bodily off the couch, and kissed her. “ W e did it!” she said with a big grin.

“I need context for that statement!” Melanie replied with an equally big grin.

“The podcast is finally big enough.” Georgie wiggled her fingers dramatically. “They want us to sell socks.”

“We’ve reached sock popularity?”

“We’ve reached sock popularity! Oh, man, the fans are gonna be so jazzed about this!”

“And have warm feet!”

“This means we’re getting a, a decent density of people who can actually share information and help each other. This is perfect! We can keep growing it, and soon… nobody will have to be alone with things like this.”

“But we’re still keeping Anybody’s Game, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Anybody’s Game is basically our brand at this point. Our fans would be heartbroken if they couldn’t ironically pretend to enjoy ‘Anarchist Manifesto’ and ‘The Ballad of Breaking Up’. Should we bring their latest album to the party?”

“That would go so badly.”

“You’re worried the neighbours will call the cops for what’s essentially sonic warfare?”

“No, I’m worried that Mary will try to show us how much better Hanson is. Do you want a repeat of that road trip? I almost took the speakers out of the van.”

“Oooh. Yeah. Best not open that can of worms again. Silent party it is.”

\---------------------------

  
  


“Hello, Jon.” Mary sat next to Jon’s grave and idly snacked on the flowers she’d brought. Jon couldn’t hear her, of course; he was well and truly gone. But this is what people did. They brought flowers to the dead, and they pretended they could still hear them.

“We’re having a house party tonight,” she said. “Should be fun. I think everyone wishes you could be there. And Sasha. And Martin. But… the world’s safe, for now, so…” she sighed. “I don’t even know if I’m doing this grief right, you know? Being a person is hard. And bits keep breaking, and I have to remake them, and I’m never the same person as I was yesterday. But you remember what that’s like, right? Or I’ll pretend you do.

“Talking to you is the easiest, I think. I can’t do anything about Sasha, and Martin, well, he can see everything that Sasha – sorry, Jonah, I know no one likes to think of her wearing Sasha’s mask – sees, so I guess we could talk to him, but Jonah would be there. I made him some cupcakes for his birthday, but I don’t know if Jonah ate them. She’d probably think I was trying to poison her.”

Mary sat by the grave in peacable silence for a while. She was going to lose all of her friends eventually, she knew. And there would be time to make more, but they would be different. And maybe she wouldn’t want to  make more . Maybe she’d lose interest in being Mary, when the last of the people who’d originally helped make Mary were gone. Or maybe she just wouldn’t know how to be Mary any more.  She wasn’t sure she knew how to be Mary even now.

Mary put the remaining flowers on Jon’s headstone, and added a small cupcake, one of the ones she’d baked for the party. “I think the others are coming to see you on the weekend,” she told the grave. “I’ll tell them to bring you some leftovers. ‘Bye, Jon.” She turned to walk out of the graveyard.

Mary didn’t know what her future would be like. But today, the sun was bright, and the birds were chirping, and she had a party to get to.

So Mary headed off to have fun with her friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FREEEEEEDOM.
> 
> Finally, we are at the end of this fic and it can get out of my brain. Thanks to everyone for reading my nonsense. If you want more nonsense, I write a web serial here: https://havenstory975986403.wordpress.com/ .
> 
> Also I have a "mechs college band" AU that I may or may not write later depending on whether I lose a fight with my own sense of self control.


End file.
